


The Ghosts of Christmas Presents

by Tenukii



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Office, Childhood Trauma, Christmas, Christmas Presents, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Hux is just a figurehead, M/M, MotoKops 2200, Phasma is the actual boss, fighting in Target, stupid title
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 11:54:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13951032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tenukii/pseuds/Tenukii
Summary: Poe and his coworker Ben loathe each other, so when they draw each other’s names for the office’s holiday gift exchange, neither has a clue about what kind of present to give.  They’re forced to learn more about one another, and both prove to be full of surprises.





	1. Chapter 1

No one in the office could remember just what had started the feud between Poe Dameron and Ben Solo, but everyone knew they hated each other.  Finn said they were like Spy vs. Spy from _MAD Magazine_ : always fighting, and while sometimes one would come out ahead and sometimes the other, it never really got them anywhere.

Phasma, the office manager, was the one who finally did something about it.  As was the tradition, everyone drew names for the annual holiday gift exchange on the Monday after Thanksgiving, and this year, Phasma stacked the deck.  When she came by Poe’s desk with a copier toner box of names to draw from, every name on the little folded pieces of paper was Ben’s.  Phasma stalked away before Poe had a chance to look at his choice—she didn’t have time to listen to his bitching—and smoothly swapped the box she carried for a different but identical one she’d stashed in the empty cubicle behind Poe’s.  The slips in that box all had Poe’s name on them.

Phasma didn’t get away from Ben’s desk fast enough; he was a consummate bitcher, and he shouted at her, “No _way_ , I’m picking _again_!” before she could even turn her back on him.

“Suck it up,” she said.

“But I got—”

“You aren’t allowed to tell,” announced Phasma.  “It has to stay a secret until the holiday party.”  Ben glowered at her, but he fell silent.  Not only did Phasma outrank Ben, who made up the little company’s entire IT department, she also managed to be intimidating all on her own.  She was taller than he was, especially in heels, and everyone agreed that she could probably take any of the other employees in a fight, easily.

 _It might come to that,_ she thought as she strode off, _if this doesn’t work.  But those two are going to quit bickering even if I have to beat them both into submission._

Phasma dumped the contents of both rigged boxes into the shredder, just in case anyone got suspicious, then took up the box with everyone else’s names—each appearing on just one piece of paper—to make her rounds of the other cubicles.  She’d never been a fan of the holiday season, but at least this year, things would be interesting.

\--

Poe liked working shipping.  Even though he did the same tasks day after day, there was something satisfying about collecting bills of lading, filling out invoices, and totaling up each day’s output.  Maybe it was the way that the workday always ended with everything settled and filed and put away; when Poe got to the office every morning, he was able to start over fresh with blank forms and new shipments.

Every once in a while, he thought about trying to start over fresh with Ben, too: make amends for their (many) past disagreements and start on the (very) rocky path to being civil coworkers, if not friends.  But then Poe would actually get to work, and he’d take one look at the larger man’s pale, glowering face and think, _Screw it._   Getting along with a jerk like Ben just wasn’t worth the effort.

 _And now I have to get him a Christmas present,_ Poe lamented as he stared at his computer screen a good thirty minutes after Phasma had withdrawn with her toner box.  The slip of paper Poe had picked, with “Ben Solo” typed on it in twelve-point Times New Roman, lay in front of Poe’s keyboard.

It wasn’t just that Poe had no clue what sort of gift Ben would want, or that he didn’t like Ben.  Poe didn’t like _Christmas_.  That always shocked people: cheerful, affable Poe Dameron didn’t like Christmas, or New Year’s, or the holidays, or whatever you wanted to call it if you were being politically correct.  Poe didn’t _seem_ like the type to be a Scrooge.

 _Because I’m **not** ,_ Poe reassured himself.  _I don’t mind spending money on other people—hell, I wouldn’t even mind spending money on **Ben** since it’s for the office party, and it wouldn’t be fair if he didn’t get a present, even if he **is** a jerk.  But I don’t know what to get him!_   Of course, the problem was more than that—the problem was that Christmas hurt—but that wasn’t the sort of thing Poe was about to admit to anyone.  Especially not Phasma in an attempt to get out of buying Ben something.  And especially not to Ben himself.

Finally, Poe decided that the only thing to do was to ask Rey what kind of gift Ben would want.  Rey functioned as both inventory manager and safety officer.  (In fact, she was far more effective at the latter job than OSHA was, considering that most of the plant employees feared being yelled at by Rey far more than they feared the company being fined.)  More importantly, Rey was Poe’s friend, and his best friend’s girlfriend.  And most importantly of all, she was Ben’s cousin.  If anyone would know what present Poe should get Ben, it would be Rey.

When Rey went back into the plant to do her weekly safety inspection that afternoon, Poe followed.  He had an excuse ready—he really did need to pick up the day’s bills of lading.  First, though, he had to talk to Rey.

“What’s up?” she asked when he caught up to her in a quiet corner of the plant.

“I need your help,” Poe muttered.

“Is this work related?”  Rey lifted an eyebrow.  “I’m kind of busy.”

“Yes, it’s work related,” retorted Poe.  “It’s about the holiday party.”

“That’s not _exactly_ work related, but I guess it’s close enough.  I won’t tell Phasma you’re slacking off, as long as you make it quick,” Rey teased him, but she frowned when he didn’t respond with a laugh, or even a smile.  “Geez, Poe, what is it?  I know you don’t like Christmas and all, but you look pretty pissed.”

Poe sighed, “I’m not pissed off, just stumped.  It’s the gift exchange, I drew—”

“Hsst!” Rey shushed him.  “If you drew me, that’s too bad.  I’m not giving you any hints—and anyway, we’re not supposed to tell who we got.”

Starting to get exasperated by the whole thing, Poe snapped, “I didn’t draw _you_ , and I don’t care if we’re not supposed to tell because I drew your stupid cousin.  What the hell am I supposed to get _Ben_ for _Christmas_?  You’re the only one who can give me any idea of what he wants.”

“Oh,” said Rey.  “Uh, well, you still shouldn’t have told me, because I won’t be much help.”  She shrugged.  “Whenever I draw him for our family Christmas, I get him gift cards, ‘cos he’s awful to buy for.  Anything he wants, he buys for himself.”

“I can’t get him a _gift card_ ,” groaned Poe.  “That’s too—too _easy_!”

“Too easy?”

“Yeah, like. . . it’s a cop out,” Poe tried to explain.  “I mean, not for _you_ to give him since you’re related, but for me, because. . . because he’ll say I didn’t even try, and that _he_ would have done better if he’d gotten _my_ name.”  He sighed and glowered down at the concrete floor as he mumbled, “A gift card isn’t good enough.”

“Not good enough, hunh?” mused Rey.  When Poe looked up again, he didn’t like the rather smug way she was smiling at him.

“What?” he growled.

“What’re you trying to impress Ben for?” Rey goaded him.

Poe felt his cheeks grow warm at the way she said it, and he protested, “I’m not trying to _impress_ him.  I’m trying to—to _outdo_ him.  Whoever he drew, if he gets them a better present than _I_ get _him_. . . he _wins_.”

“Ugh, Poe, not everything is a competition,” said Rey.  “No one _wins_ at Christmas, and you don’t have to be the best at _everything_.”

“Yeah I do, because I _am_ the best,” said Poe, forcing a smile.  It had the desired effect, for Rey relaxed at seeing him acting more like his usual playful self.

“Okay, you being the best at everything notwithstanding, office holiday parties aren’t about seeing who gives the greatest present,” Rey tried to convince him.  “They’re about celebrating the fact that we’ve made it through another year without killing each other.  That, and free food.  You can get Ben a gift card, and it’ll be fine.  I mean, that’s what I’m doing for the person I drew.”

“It wasn’t me, was it?” asked Poe.  Not that he’d mind a gift card on principle, but knowing Rey, it would be to somewhere practical, like the Home Depot.  If Poe had to celebrate Christmas, he wanted to do it somewhere more fun than the Home Depot.

“For the millionth time, it’s a secret!” Rey spat at him.  “. . . But no, it wasn’t you.”

“Rey, please,” Poe begged one last time.  “Just—just help me out a _little_.  Just a hint!  There’s gotta be _something_ Ben likes that he doesn’t already have.”  Poe couldn’t really imagine sullen, grumpy Ben liking anything at all, but he supposed everyone had to have a hobby of some kind.  He could tell from the way Rey had twisted up her mouth that she was weakening, and he gave her his very best pleading expression.

“Dammit, don’t look at me like that,” she groaned.  “That’s how you got this job, isn’t it?  Those big brown eyes melted even Phasma’s icy heart, right?”

Poe snickered, “Not exactly.  Or if they did, it froze right back up again.  But never mind Phasma, does that mean you’re gonna help me?”

“Okay, fine, I’ll _try_ , but I don’t know how much help I’ll really be—because I honestly can only think of one thing Ben’s ever wanted that he never got,” Rey told Poe.  “And it’s pretty stupid, _and_ expensive, so you’re not gonna want to get it for—”

“I don’t care!” Poe interrupted.  “I’ll get it, anything!  What is it?!”

Rey’s response was somewhere between a chuckle and a sigh.  “Okay.  So you remember the MotoKops, right?”

Poe nodded.  “Yeah, sure.  I used to watch the cartoon, and I had a few of the action figures.”

“Me too,” said Rey.  “Did you have the Power Wagons?”

“One of them,” Poe chuckled.  “Got it for Christmas, but my dad made sure I knew it was the _only_ one they were giving me.  He told me that if I wanted a bunch of toy mini-vans, I’d have to buy them myself.”  Poe remembered how popular the MotoKops toy line had been at the time, and how hard the “Power Wagon” playsets (which really did look sort of like garishly colored mini-vans) had been to come by, sort of like his generation’s Hatchimals.

“You didn’t want ‘em _that_ bad, hunh?” Rey laughed.

“Well, actually. . . that was the year of the fire, so I didn’t really get a chance to get the rest of them,” said Poe, hesitantly.  He sort of regretted it when he saw the horrified look Rey gave him.

“Shit, I’m sorry, Poe,” she muttered, but Poe shook his head.

“No, it’s okay!  It’s a good memory, we had such a great time that Christmas morning.  And you know what?  I still have that Power Wagon, because I loved it so much, I wanted to take it to bed with me.”  Poe smiled.  “Mom finally gave in and let me, and I still had it in my arms when the firefighters found me.  They carried it out right along with me.”

Rey managed a little smile back at him, but he could tell she was still embarrassed as she continued, “Well, uh. . . I went through a phase where I liked the show too, so my dad bought me some of toys—the girly ones,” she sighed with some lingering resentment.  “Cassie Styles and Dream Floater.”

Poe nodded again.  He remembered the heroine Cassie Styles and her pink Power Wagon well—most of his friends had had their first crushes on Cassie, who was rather sexily drawn for a kids’ cartoon character.  Poe himself had liked the bad guys—especially the _guy_ bad guys—better.

“So, uh,” Poe prompted, “what exactly does all this have to do with Ben and Christmas?”

“I’m getting to that,” retorted Rey.  “Ben watched the cartoon with me one day when he came over to play, and he loved it, but his mom wouldn’t let him have any of the toys.  She said MotoKops was too violent.”

Poe groaned, “Wait, let me guess.  You want me to buy Ben a bunch of MotoKops stuff for Christmas.”  Rey smirked, over the awkwardness of Poe’s own MotoKops experience by now.

“Not quite.  I let him play with my toys, so he was okay with not having them himself.  But there was one Power Wagon he really, _really_ wanted, and I didn’t have it—the Meatwagon.”

Poe swallowed.  “Oh.”

“You remember that one, right?” Rey asked.  “The Power Wagon for No Face, the bad guy?”

“Yeah,” Poe mumbled.  “I remember.”  He should—the Meatwagon was the playset his parents had given him their last Christmas together.  “So you think I should give a guy in his thirties a plastic toy called the ‘Meatwagon.’”

“I told you it was stupid,” Rey sniffed.  “And anyway, those old toys are collectibles now—they go for crazy amounts of money.  If you can even find one on eBay or something, it’ll be way more than you’d want to spend on _Ben_.  That’s why he hasn’t just bought it for himself, he told me he couldn’t justify spending that much money on a plastic toy.”

“Just how much does it cost, anyway?” Poe ventured.

“I’m not sure exactly,” said Rey, “but I sold my MotoKops stuff about a year ago for a couple hundred dollars, and Meatwagon was a lot rarer than Dream Floater.”

“Oh,” Poe said a second time.

“Yeah.  Like I said, just get him a gift card,” Rey advised him.  “Christmas isn’t a competition, and Ben’ll probably be surprised if you get him anything at all.”

“Thanks, Rey,” sighed Poe.  He left her to her work and went over to the shipping dock to get his paperwork, but his mind kept wandering back to the embarrassingly-named Meatwagon dilemma.  It would be _so perfect_ for him to give Ben the one thing the spoiled brat had wanted but never gotten, something rare and expensive to boot.  It would drive Ben absolutely _crazy_.  By the time Poe got off work at five, he was fixated on the idea, and as soon as he got home, he turned on his computer and got on eBay.

Rey hadn’t been kidding about the price and rarity of MotoKops items in general, and the Meatwagon in particular.  There were only two Meatwagons up for sale: one with its original box and a Buy It Now price of $500, and a boxless one for auction.  The starting bid had been $99, but three people had already bid and jacked the price up to $175, with three days still to go before the auction ended.  Just to see if the $500 Buy It Now was as out there as it seemed, Poe clicked on the link to show sold listings.  One Meatwagon with box, in slightly worse condition than the one currently for sale, had gone for almost $400, and several other auctions for out of box toys had ended at around $300.

 _So $500 isn’t as crazy as it sounds,_ Poe thought grimly, _and even one without the box is way more than I could afford_.  In fact, for a moment, Poe actually considered putting his own Meatwagon up for sale.  Of course he didn’t have the box—that had gotten burned up along with everything else in his family’s house—but even without it, he should be able to make at least $300.

 _That would pay off a lot on my credit card,_ Poe told himself.  _And it’s just a toy. . . ._   But it _wasn’t_ just a toy, not really, and Poe knew it.  The Meatwagon, for all its over-the-top black plastic and goofy name, was all he had left from his mother besides her wedding rings, and nearly all he had left from his father; Kes Dameron had died almost five years ago, and burial expenses had eaten up what little he had to leave Poe.  Selling the Meatwagon was just out of the question.  In fact, Poe still had the toy on the top shelf of his closet, where he could see it every morning when he got dressed for work.

“So much for that idea,” he muttered aloud as he left eBay and went to check his Facebook before he started fixing something to eat for dinner.  “But I’m _not_ getting him a stupid gift card, I can do better than _that_.”

As if to mock him, Facebook decided to display Ben as the very first “suggested friend” on Poe’s wall when he logged in.  Poe glared at the name “Ben Solo” and the little square picture above it, a photo of Ben’s face wearing a pretentiously moody expression.  Their only mutual friend was Rey, but Facebook seemed convinced that Poe welcomed the suggestion that he and Ben be friends; Ben popped up nearly every time Poe went to the site.  Poe kept meaning to hide the suggestion, but he hadn’t ever gotten around to it.

He was about to “get around to it” right then and there, but something occurred to him just as he hovered his cursor over the little “X” in the top corner of the picture: maybe Ben’s Facebook profile would give Poe some gift ideas.

 _Surely he has **some** information about himself on his profile,_ Poe thought.  He clicked on Ben’s name, but of course antisocial Ben had hidden his information from non-friends; all Poe could see was the pretentious profile picture and Ben’s cover photo, which depicted a bleak volcanic landscape.  Poe sighed and looked at the “Add Friend” button.

 _It’s the only way I’ll learn anything else about him,_ he decided, and he clicked the button.  _If he’ll even accept the request—he probably won’t, he hates me._   In fact, Poe was tempted to cancel the request as soon as he sent it, but he forced himself to get up from the computer and go make dinner instead.  While a can of soup heated on the stove, Poe checked the computer.  No response.

 _Of course not._   Poe sighed.  As he stood over the stove, keeping an eye on the pot of soup, Poe reminded himself that Facebook wouldn’t tell him if Ben rejected his request, which had likely already happened if Ben was online. _He’ll probably make fun of me at work tomorrow for even sending it,_ Poe sulked, _and I’ll be stuck buying him a gift card anyway.  It just isn’t fair—why couldn’t I have drawn Finn?  Or Rey, or hell, even Phasma.  Anyone but Ben._

Poe didn’t check the computer again until right before he went to bed, after he’d eaten dinner and had a shower and watched some TV.  The friends icon at the top of his Facebook page had a little red mark over it, and Poe’s heart nearly stopped.

 _Can’t be,_ he thought, but when he clicked the icon, it told him that Ben had accepted the friend request, although Poe’s chat window showed that Ben was no longer signed in.  Poe felt inexplicably excited about the acceptance, and he scolded himself for that. . . but he still clicked over to look at Ben’s profile again, right away.

Unfortunately, it didn’t offer much more information to Poe as a friend than it had to him before.  Employment, interests, relationship status—all were blank.  Ben hadn’t even posted anything to his wall; the only posts there were things shared with him by his Facebook friends, most of whom seemed to be related to him.

“Damn,” Poe swore under his breath.  _I friended him for nothing—and I can’t unfriend him now, it would be rude_.  Not that Poe hadn’t been rude to Ben before, or that Ben hadn’t been rude right back.  Really, Poe felt like he had scored some kind of victory, however small, by gaining access to Ben’s profile, and he didn’t want to give that up just yet.

The only section Poe hadn’t explored was Ben’s photos.  _Might as well, though_ , he decided, clicking the link.  _Maybe he has pictures of something he enjoys._   But no, while Poe had posted hundreds of photos of himself and his friends, pictures spanning several years, Ben only had a handful.  And, save for his profile and cover photos, all of his pictures had been posted and tagged by family members, not by Ben himself.  Out of curiosity, Poe selected the thumbnail of a picture that appeared to have been taken the previous Christmas.  It showed Ben and what must have been his family, standing in front of a humungous Christmas tree.

Rey had posted the photo and tagged herself and Ben.  Poe also recognized her father, Luke, whom he had met once.  Luke had greying fair hair and was rather short, and Poe decided the also-quite-short woman standing next to him must be his sister, Ben’s mother.  With her brunette hair and eyes, she looked more like Rey than Luke did, but she also somehow resembled Ben despite the fact that he towered over her from where he stood beside her.  The handsome, grey-haired man on Ben’s other side had to be his father.

All of the family wore matching forest green sweaters, and all of them were smiling. . . even Ben, a little.  Poe stared at him, wondering how his mother, or Rey, or whoever, had convinced him to wear something other than black, and how they had made him smile.  Poe couldn’t remember _ever_ seeing Ben smile before.  It wasn’t that big of a smile, but it still made Ben look, well, _happy_.  Maybe a little dorky, but in a cute way, because of the happiness.

 _Ugh, I did not just think of him as **cute** ,_ Poe thought with a wince.  He closed out his browser and turned off the computer before he wasted any more time looking at his nemesis’s Facebook page. _Maybe he **knows** , maybe he knows somehow that I drew his name, and that’s why he accepted the request, because he realized what I’m up to.  And he’s laughing at me **right now** because there’s nothing on his profile to give me any ideas._

That whole conspiracy theory was ridiculous, and Poe knew it.  He was letting Ben mess with his head, just like always, only this time Ben wasn’t even trying.

 _I’ll figure it out before the party,_ Poe vowed as he got ready for bed.  _I’ve got nearly a month, I can think of a stupid present idea in a month!_   He started to climb into his bed, then paused and looked over at the open closet door.  He could see the Meatwagon up on its shelf, appearing almost to be looking back at him with its plastic headlights that really lit up—in red, no less—with two AA batteries, not included.

“You _are_ kind of creepy,” Poe muttered to it.  “No wonder Ben’s mother wouldn’t buy you for him.”  But then he grinned at the toy van and got on into bed without shutting the door.  Maybe the Meatwagon was creepy, but he and it had been through a lot together.  Within thirty minutes, Poe was asleep under its watchful vehicular gaze.

\--

To be continued

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  _Meatwagon is watching you._


	2. Chapter 2

That evening, Rey had just settled into bed with a book when her phone rang.

_That better not be Poe,_ she thought with a glare at the device lying on her nightstand.  Rey already had enough to worry about with the name _she’d_ drawn, that of their boss, Mr. Hux.  (Yeah, she was getting him a gift card, but a gift card to _where_?  And for how much?  Did Hux even go anywhere besides the office?)  Rey didn’t need Poe’s holiday troubles to worry about too.

But when she picked up her phone, Rey saw not Poe’s name, but that of his giftee.  She frowned and answered the phone.

“What do you want, Ben?” Rey sighed.  “I’m about to go to bed.”

“At nine o’clock?” her cousin scoffed over the phone.  “Don’t you have a life?”

“Listen, I’m tired!  I’m the one who’s been on her feet all day, not parking my ass in front of a computer slacking off,” Rey retorted.  She and Ben bickered almost as much as he and Poe did, but their taunts usually lacked the venom of those the two men exchanged.  Tonight, though, Rey was especially irritable, so she added, “ _And_ I’m the one who can get a boyfriend to go out with, rather than spending my time whining about being single, so I’d say _I’m_ the one with a life!”

A long silence sat over the phone connection; then Ben muttered, “Rey, that was mean.”

Rey sighed a second time.  “Okay, you’re right.  I’m sorry.  But really, Ben, my day sucked, and I’ve already helped enough people with their problems today.”

“Who said I need your help with a problem?” Ben asked, rather defensively.

“You never call me unless you need something,” replied Rey.  “So forgive me if I misjudged you—but if I didn’t, spit it out and get it over with.  What do you want?”

Ben heaved a sigh himself then admitted, “I do need your help, with that ridiculous gift exchange at work.  I drew—”

“ _We aren’t supposed to tell!_ ” Rey bellowed into the phone, but at the same time, she had a pretty good idea of what Ben had been about to say.  _What did I do to deserve this?_ she wondered.

“I don’t care,” Ben growled.  “I drew Poe’s name, and you’re got to tell me what to get him.”

“Ugh, _Ben,_ ” groaned Rey.  “This is _not my problem_.  You’re a grown man, and so is Poe.  You can deal with him like an adult.”

“Rey,” said Ben in a threatening tone she knew very well, “if you don’t help me, I won’t get him _anything_.”  Normally that threatening tone had absolutely no effect on Rey—she had long ago learned that to react, even in anger, was just giving Ben what he wanted.

But normally, Poe’s happiness wasn’t the thing being threatened.  Even though Rey was usually able to stand back and stay out of Ben and Poe’s fights, what Poe had said earlier that day haunted her: _It’s a good memory, we had such a great time that Christmas morning._   That marked the first time Poe had ever seemed happy about anything Christmas-related, and she couldn’t stand the thought of Ben ruining the holiday for him all over again by embarrassing him—or worse, hurting his feelings—at the office party.

_I don’t care what Poe says, if he really hated Ben, he wouldn’t be so obsessed with getting him the right present,_ Rey thought.  _He **would** be hurt if Ben didn’t get him a gift, and I’m not going to let that happen._

Aloud, she told Ben in a tight voice, “Like hell you’re not getting him anything.  You know how hard Christmas is for Poe.”

Ben made a derisive, scoffing sound.  “Oh come on.  What’s so hard about Christmas for him?  _Everything’s_ easy for Poe.”  Rey just barely managed to catch herself before she exploded at her cousin: _Maybe he really doesn’t know._

“You mean he hasn’t told you?” she asked.

“Hasn’t told me _what_?” Ben snapped.  “Poe doesn’t tell me anything, I don’t _talk_ to Poe.”

Rey hesitated for a moment, wondering how Poe would feel if he knew she was telling his life story to his worst enemy, when Poe himself had apparently decided to keep it from Ben.  But then Rey decided that she was doing it for Poe’s own good—anything to make some kind of peace between the two men.

“Ben,” she finally said, “one Christmas when Poe was a kid. . . well, you’ve heard about Christmas trees catching fire, right?  Real ones, I mean?”

“Yeah.”  Ben sounded vaguely suspicious.

“Well, that happened to his family’s tree,” Rey told him.  “At least they think that’s what happened—it got too dry, or they left a space heater on, or something.  Poe was little, he doesn’t remember.  But anyway, his house burned down, on Christmas night.”  She paused, but to Ben’s credit, he didn’t try to interrupt.  Rey went on, “The family lost everything, _literally_ everything except the clothes they were sleeping in.  Well, and today, Poe said he carried his favorite toy out with him.”

When she stopped talking, Ben asked in a low, quiet tone, “They all got out?  His family?”

“Yeah, the firefighters got him and his parents out,” said Rey.  “But Poe’s mom, she didn’t make it.  She died at the hospital, from smoke inhalation.  He doesn’t even have a picture of her, because everything burned up.”  She paused again, and when Ben didn’t say anything else, Rey finished lamely, “And that’s. . . that’s why Christmas is hard for Poe.  I think he handles it pretty well, all things considered, and maybe he really wouldn’t care if you stood him up in the present department.  But I’m not gonna take that chance.”

“Fuck,” said Ben.  His voice was still low and quiet, almost husky.  Rey couldn’t read his tone to guess at what sort of emotion was behind it.

She muttered, “Look, get him a gift card.  Hell, get him a box of candy canes, I don’t care, just get him _something_.  I know you don’t like him, but Poe really is a good person, Ben.  He doesn’t deserve to be hurt.”

“I know he doesn’t,” Ben grumbled, and Rey relaxed slightly.  “Rey, it’s not that I _want_ to hurt him.  And—I don’t _not like_ him.”

Rey raised an eyebrow, as if Ben could see her.  This was getting interesting.

“You mean you _do_ like him?” she asked.

Ben retorted, “I didn’t say _that_.  Poe’s _annoying_ —he’s too cheerful, and he talks too much.  But. . . I really didn’t know about his—his mother and all.  I’ll get him a present, okay?”

“Okay,” Rey relented.  “Thanks, Ben.”

“Uh, one other thing,” he said after they were quiet a moment.  “He. . . friended me on Facebook.  Did you tell him to do that?”

“No!” Rey snorted.  “What did I just get through saying?  You’re grown men, not teenagers.  I don’t have time to police your social media.”

“Well why else would he do it?” protested Ben.

“Hell if I know,” Rey lied.  She was pretty sure she knew _exactly_ why: Poe was looking at Ben’s profile to get gift ideas.  _Good luck with that,_ she thought.  _But maybe it could work the other way around. . . ._

Out loud, she suggested, “But why don’t you look at Poe’s profile to see what he might want for Christmas?  I know he’s really into airplanes, and I think he builds models, but I don’t know the details.”

“I guess I could,” Ben muttered.  “Anyway, I gotta go.”  Rey smiled at hearing the embarrassment Ben was trying to cover; it meant that she’d gotten him to feel bad about how he’d been treating Poe, at least a little.

“Yeah,” she said.  “See you tomorrow.”

After they hung up, Rey leaned back against her pillows, but she wasn’t looking at her book.  Instead, she stared off into space and pondered the coincidence of Ben and Poe drawing each other’s names in the gift exchange.  It seemed too weird to have happened just by chance. . . and as she thought back to that afternoon, she remembered how Phasma had taken the box of names to Poe and Ben’s desks first, and how the manager had disappeared for a few moments after that, before she’d gone around to the others’ cubicles.

_Phasma rigged it,_ Rey realized.  _She must have!_   Rey shook her head and grinned at the same time.  It wasn’t like Phasma to get involved in the office drama, but apparently even she could only tolerate so much.  And apparently, her plan was working—or at least Ben and Poe were being forced to think about each other as more than enemies.

_Well, they’re Facebook friends now,_ Rey thought as she finally turned her attention back to her book.  _That’s better than nothing._

\--

At that very moment, in fact, Ben was looking at Poe’s Facebook page with growing frustration.  Despite Rey’s suggestion, he saw nothing to give him any ideas of what to get Poe.  Instead, Poe’s wall was filled with posts from other people: flirty comments from girls, stupid memes, pictures of him hanging out with Finn and Rey and other people Ben had never seen before.  In all the pictures, Poe’s handsome face was captured smiling or laughing.  He always seemed happy.

_Just like he is at work,_ Ben thought as he glared at the selfie Poe was using as his profile picture.  _Always disgustingly cheerful—except when he’s yelling at **me**._   It was hard to imagine Poe ever being unhappy about anything, especially the holidays.  _But I guess he has a right to hate Christmas, after what happened to his family._

As many problems as Ben had with his own parents, he loved them, and he didn’t like thinking about Poe losing his mother so young, without even a picture to remind him of her.  Rey was right: Poe didn’t deserve to be hurt all over again, not at Christmas.

“Fuck,” Ben swore for the second time that evening.  He rested his elbows on the edge of the desk, where he was sitting hunched over his laptop, and leaned his head on his hands.  “Why do I have to get you a present?  Why me?  Why _you_?”  He lifted his head back up and demanded, “And why the hell did you friend me?”

Those questions were only the tip of the iceberg, and Ben had a thousand others: _Why did I accept?  Why do I keep looking at your picture?  Why do you have to be so—so gorgeous?_

Ben hadn’t really intended to follow through on his threat of not getting Poe a present.  But getting Poe a present was a problem, because Ben was a perfectionist—or at least that’s what his father had accused him of one time.  And Ben supposed he’d been right.  Ben didn’t see much point in doing anything halfway; if he couldn’t be the best at something, he didn’t want to try at all.  (That, he realized for the first time, was why Poe bothered him so much.  Poe seemed to be the best at _everything_.)

_I want to give him the perfect gift,_ Ben thought, _because that’s what **he’ll** give to whomever he drew.  I can’t let him outdo me at Christmas too!_

Ben absently clicked through a few more of Poe’s photos, without seeing a single one that suggested a gift idea.  Poe really did make model planes, and he wasn’t even too embarrassed to post photos of his finished projects in a Facebook album, but Ben wouldn’t have had a clue about what kind of model kit to buy.  Poe’s fashion sense was completely different from Ben’s, and Ben didn’t even know what kind of books or movies Poe liked.

_I really don’t know anything about him, even though we’ve worked together for a couple years now,_ Ben realized.  _I never bothered to find out—although he never bothered to learn anything about me, either.  The only things I know about Poe are what Rey’s told me. . . and maybe she’s told him something about me too._   Ben blanched slightly at the frightening thought of all the things his cousin could share about him.

_And if that’s all I know about him,_ Ben despaired, _how will I ever find the right gift?  I can’t give back what Poe lost.  I can’t give him a family. . . ._

Ben looked at the block displaying some of Poe’s friends—he had over a thousand of them—and scowled. . . but then his scowl faded as something occurred to him. _I can’t give him a family, but I **can** give back something he lost. . . ._   It would take a lot of time and work, but he had almost a month—and, he was sure, more determination than anybody who had ever given Poe a present before.

_But I’m going to do it,_ Ben vowed.  _I’m going to give Poe the best present ever, even if it kills me._

\--

One week before the office holiday party, Poe was close to panicking.  Unlike Ben, he hadn’t had any gift ideas, complicated or not, and even if Poe had been able to afford a Meatwagon from eBay, there weren’t any to be had: all of them had sold, and no new MotoKops items had been listed in the past several days.

_Dammit dammit **dammit** ,_ Poe thought as he slouched at his desk and stared at his computer monitor.  He had just finished placing an order for packing tape from Office Depot and had snuck over to eBay for a minute to do one last Meatwagon-check, which of course proved fruitless.

Then, as if things weren’t bad enough, he heard Phasma clear her throat behind him.  Poe started and closed out his browser window, but it was far too late.

“Run out of things to do, Poe?” the office manager sniffed.

“No!”  Poe flushed and spun his chair around to look up (and up, and _up_ ) at Phasma.  “I was just. . . uh. . . well, Christmas is just a week away and I hadn’t finished buying all my gifts yet and uh—”

“Then you won’t mind going over to Target on your lunch to get decorations for the party,” she cut him off.  “You can finish your shopping at the same time.”

Poe glowered at her, but in truth, he didn’t really mind.  He’d just been going to have a sandwich at his desk anyway, and he actually liked shopping—not for holiday decorations, maybe, but the idea Phasma had suggested so sarcastically was a pretty good one.

_Maybe I’ll see something there I can get Ben,_ Poe thought.  _And if I don’t. . . I guess I could go ahead and get him a stupid gift card._

“All right,” he said aloud.  “Can I take lunch early and go now?”

“I suppose,” Phasma sighed, “as long as it’s okay with Ben.”  She turned toward the IT department—which consisted only of Ben’s cubicle—but Poe lurched to his feet and grabbed her arm to stop her.

As Phasma looked back at him with a glare that could have frozen Santa Claus himself, Poe stammered, “W-what do you mean, ‘as long as it’s okay with Ben’?  What does _Ben_ have to do with it?”

“He’s going with you.”  Phasma snatched her arm back and stalked away.

“What?  _Why?_ ” wailed Poe, but she ignored him.  He sighed miserably and thought, _So much for getting his gift while I’m there.  And now I’ve got to look at his stupid face for my whole lunch break too?_   A growl from within Ben’s cubicle cut off Poe’s thoughts, and a second later, Phasma emerged, followed by Ben waving his arms and bitching.

“Why do _I_ have to go?” he was protesting.

“Because you always have the least work to do around here,” Phasma informed him.

Ben persisted, “Then why does _he_ have to go?”  He looked past Phasma to glare at Poe.

“Because if I send you by yourself, you’ll come back with a black Christmas tree.  I _know_ you, Ben.”  Phasma pulled the corporate credit card out of her pocket.  “Who wants to be responsible for this?”

“I will,” both men said at once; then both glowered at one another.  Phasma looked from one of them to the other, pursed her lips, then handed the card to Ben.  His full, pale lips drew up in a smirk of triumph, and Poe wanted to punch him.

“Only because you have other things to buy,” Phasma told Poe, “and you don’t need to be tempted to put Christmas presents for your girlfriend or whoever on the company card.”

“I wouldn’t do that!” Poe grumbled, and she sighed.

“It was a _joke_ , Poe.”  Poe rather doubted it, since he couldn’t remember the last time he saw Phasma so much as smile, but arguing with her wouldn’t get him anywhere.

Instead, he muttered, “Fine, whatever.  What are we supposed to buy for the party?”

“We need a tree and ornaments to put on it,” Phasma said.  “They can be in whatever colors you two think are suitable—but nothing too overtly Christmassy or Hanukkahy or otherwise implying that we’re advocating any one holiday over another.”

“I thought you _didn’t_ want a black tree,” retorted Ben.  “That’s the only option we have left.”  Poe started to laugh but covered it with a cough; he didn’t need Ben thinking his dumb jokes were actually funny.

“Just go _do it_ ,” Phasma snapped.  “Without killing each other.”

They shrugged into their jackets and stalked out to the little parking lot without speaking.  Poe headed for his car until he realized Ben wasn’t following.  Instead, the other man was going to _his_ car.  Poe glared after him.

“I’ll drive,” he called.

“No, I don’t mind,” Ben replied.  He had stopped beside his vehicle, some kind of sporty black sedan that looked far pricier than anything Poe could afford.

“You’re carrying the credit card,” said Poe, “so I’m driving.”

Now Ben was the one to glare.  “This isn’t a contest, Poe.  And anyway, my car’s bigger.”

Poe cast an embarrassed look at his own little two-door—purchased used, four years ago—and mumbled, “You don’t have to brag about it.”

“I wasn’t—Poe, I didn’t mean it like _that_.”  When Poe scowled over at Ben, he was surprised to see a faint touch of color on the other man’s pale cheeks.   _It’s probably the wind,_ Poe thought.

“Sure you didn’t,” he muttered.  He gave his car an apologetic pat on its dented hood and trudged over to Ben’s sleek, shiny car.

“Really,” Ben sighed when Poe got there, “I just meant that it’ll hold more stuff.  If we have to buy a tree, it might not fit in your—”

“I don’t _care_.”  Poe jerked on the passenger door hand of Ben’s car and found it still locked.  “Would you unlock your damn car so I can get in, please?  It’s cold out here.”

Ben grumbled but complied.  The car was so low to the ground, Poe felt like he was practically lying down once he got in, but it was also even nicer inside than he’d expected.  The heated leather seats began to warm up as soon as Ben started the engine.

_At least my butt won’t get cold,_ Poe thought randomly.  For some reason, that struck him as hilariously funny, and he didn’t quite manage to cough in time to hide that laugh.  Ben gave him an odd look, not quite a glare, and Poe felt himself flush.  He turned away to look at the window, lamenting, _He probably thinks I’m crazy **and** rude.  But he’s the one who was making fun of my car!_

As Ben pulled out into traffic, he punched the button to turn on the radio.  Christmas music blared out of the speakers, and Poe winced even though he was also a little surprised; Ben didn’t seem like the type to listen to that kind of thing.

“Sorry,” Ben muttered.  He turned the music down some then hovered his hand near the radio controls.  “Uh, I—I don’t have anything else in here.  I know you don’t—not everyone likes Christmas music.  I can just turn it off—”

“No!” Poe said quickly.  _Anything_ was better than being stuck in silence for the ten minutes it would take them to get to the store.  “I don’t care.  It’s your car.”

Ben stayed quiet a second, then said, “Well I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

_Too late for that,_ Poe thought.  _But how does he know I don’t like Christmas, anyway?  I guess he noticed last year, it’s not like I try to hide it. . . ._   Ben had put his hand back on the steering wheel, and when Poe glanced at him sideways, he saw that the larger man looked pretty uncomfortable himself.  Poe abruptly felt a little bad about the whole thing; Ben _was_ trying to be nice, he supposed.

“It’s okay,” Poe finally said.  “It’s—it’s Trans-Siberian Orchestra, they’re not bad.”

Ben cast him another look, this one a bit surprised, and asked, “You’re. . . sure?”

“Yeah.”  Poe fished around for some way to make conversation.  “Uh, I mean, some of their stuff is way too sappy and—and Christmassy, but the rest is okay.  I really liked them better as Savatage, but obviously that’s not where the money is.”

“Wait, you’ve heard of Savatage?”  Ben actually sounded impressed, and they looked at each other in surprise.  “I. . . didn’t know you liked metal.”

“Um, some of it.”  For some ridiculous reason, Poe blushed again.  “Not—not like death metal or anything, but. . . but yeah.  Savatage is pretty good, and I like hair metal a lot.”

Ben grinned.  His smile was so sudden and infectious, it made Poe want to smile too, a little.

“Oh c’mon, Christmas music is too corny for you, but you listen to _hair_ metal?  You little dork,” Ben chuckled.  For once, Poe didn’t feel offended by him, even at being called a dork, since Ben said it almost affectionately.

“Oh like _you’re_ so cool,” he retorted with the smile he finally allowed to show.  “Let me guess what _you_ like, Mr. ‘Let’s Get a Black Christmas Tree.’  Therion, right?  And Nightwish and Lacuna Coil?  All that melodic, over-orchestrated goth crap, am I right?”

“It is not over-orchestrated,” Ben countered.  “And yes, I like those bands.  They’re deep.”

“Deep?  You mean pretentious.”

“Hmph, if you like hair metal, you probably think any song’s pretentious unless it’s about getting laid,” charged Ben.

“I do _not_.”  Despite the unusual friendliness of their banter, Poe was starting to get uncomfortable again.  Because Ben had always seemed so uptight, Poe had never thought he’d hear the other man say the phrase “getting laid,” even in reference to cheesy eighties songs.  Ben’s deep voice made the words sound surprisingly sexy.

“I don’t even like the songs about getting laid,” Poe added defensively to distract himself from such thoughts.

“I’m surprised,” replied Ben.  “If you’re buying your girlfriend presents during work hours, you’re trying awful hard in the ‘getting laid’ department.”

“Ugh, Phasma was trying to be funny when she said that,” Poe grumbled.  “I don’t even _have_ a girlfriend.”   He turned to glare at Ben and found the other man smiling, as if he found it amusing that Poe was single.  Poe glared all the harder and thought about trying to explain that he didn’t _want_ a girlfriend, that he wasn’t even attracted to girls, but then he decided that anything he said would just make him look even more desperate.  Instead, he slumped back in his seat, folded his arms, and glared out the window the rest of the way to the store.

After Ben parked the car, they got out and walked up to the doors, keeping a good amount of space between one another.  A woman with the Salvation Army was standing out front with a red kettle, and Poe winced at the loud clang of the bell she was ringing.  He didn’t mind giving to charities, but he wasn’t carrying any cash, and he couldn’t really afford to be giving away money when he still had Ben’s present to buy.  The sound of the ringing bell only made Poe feel guilty.  He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked into Target with his head down.  For his part, Ben completely ignored the worker and her bell.  _Probably thinks he’s too cool for something like donating to charity_ , Poe decided with a scowl.

Just inside the store, Poe stopped by the dollar section and eyed the inexpensive holiday decorations there.

“Grab a cart,” he told Ben over his shoulder.  “It’ll make Hux happy if we get some of this cheap stuff and save him some money.”  Poe half expected Ben to complain about being bossed around, but Ben got a shopping cart and rolled it over to Poe without speaking.  He stood there fidgeting while Poe perused the ornaments, and after a minute of that, Poe started to feel awkward again.

“Are you gonna help, or are you just gonna stand there?” he grumbled.

Instead of answering, Ben blurted out, “I left my phone in the car.”

“For Christ’s sake,” muttered Poe with a roll of his eyes.  He managed not to call Ben a moron to his face, but it was difficult.  “Well go get it then.  I’ll wait here.”

Ben turned and stalked back out of the store again.  Poe shook his head and dropped a few generic, green ball-type ornaments in the cart, then looked out in the direction Ben had gone to see if the other man was even hurrying.  Poe suspected the forgotten cell phone might just be a ruse to get Ben out of helping with the shopping.

Sure enough, Ben hadn’t even gone to his car; in fact, he hadn’t made it farther than the doors, where he had stopped just outside the store.

“Dumbass,” Poe said under his breath. . . but he felt guilty about it when he saw _why_ Ben had stopped: he was talking to the Salvation Army worker and dropping some folded money into her bucket.  Poe stared, then quickly went back to looking at decorations when Ben turned to come back inside, pulling his phone out of his jacket pocket at the same time.

When Ben returned, Poe asked, “You find it?” with a glance at the taller man.

“Yeah.”  Ben held up his phone as falsified evidence that he had really gone to his car.  Then he looked down into the cart at Poe’s ornament selection and declared, “Those are so tacky.”

“They’re cheap!” snapped Poe.

“And it shows.”  Ben grabbed the cart and wheeled it off, heading deeper into the store.  “I’m going to the holiday section to get some decent looking decorations.”

“Jerk!” Poe said after him, not caring whether Ben heard him or not.  Still, on the way back to the larger holiday display, Poe wondered why, if Ben was such a big jerk, he would go to all the trouble of sneaking back outside to donate money to the Salvation Army.

_He didn’t want me to know he was doing it,_ Poe thought, _like he was embarrassed—maybe because I didn’t give them anything?  But since when does he care about what I think of him?_   Actually, knowing that Ben had done something nice for someone made Poe think better, not worse, of him, but Poe decided to pretend he hadn’t seen.

By the time Poe caught up to Ben, he was already in the holiday department looking at Christmas trees.

“How big a tree do you think we need?” he asked Poe.  “Ten feet?”

“Ugh, no, we’d need a ladder to decorate it then,” Poe protested.

“Speak for yourself,” quipped Ben, looking down—literally—at Poe with a smirk.  Poe felt his face grow hot.

“Whatever,” he mumbled, “but we don’t need a tree that big.  Eight feet will be fine.”

“Okay, okay.”  Ben lifted a boxed, pre-lit tree with ease and put it on the bottom rack of the shopping cart.

Poe eyed it and asked, “Does it have to have all white lights?  That’s kind of boring.”

“Colored lights are tacky,” announced Ben, “just like those ornaments of yours.”  He spun the cart around and pushed it over to an aisle with boxes of ornament sets.

“Why do you always have to be such a pain in the ass?” Poe demanded as he followed.  “You didn’t even want to come, so what do you care which decorations we get?”

“I have to sit and look at them just like everyone else,” Ben replied as he picked up a box of gold ornaments.  “If you really want those green ones, these will look okay with them.”

“But that’s just two colors!” Poe argued.  “I like these better.”  He pointed at another box, which held a mixture of jewel-tone ornaments.

Ben shook his head.  “I don’t want our tree to look like someone spilled a bag of Skittles on it!”

“Well _I_ don’t want our tree to put me to sleep!”  Poe folded his arms across his chest.  “But fine, get your boring gold balls.  I’m gonna go get some of the ones that are shaped like other stuff—”

“Like hell you are!”  Ben dropped his box of ornaments in the cart, then gripped the cart’s red plastic side and leaned on it, towards Poe.  “You are _not_ putting a bunch of cutesy little shit all over our tree!”

“Why do _you_ get to decide what goes on it?” snarled Poe.

“I get to decide because _I_ have some taste!  You don’t even _like_ Christmas!”

“That’s all the more reason for me to get something I _do_ like!  And what do you mean, _you_ have taste?  Dressing like you’re going to a funeral every day is _taste_?”

“It’s better than dressing like I fell off the back of a motorcycle!”

Poe looked down at his scuffed leather jacket in some embarrassment.  “I—I do not look like I fell off a motorcycle!”

“Your _hair_ certainly does,” Ben sniffed.  “Do you _ever_ comb that mess of curls?  Or shave in the morning, for that matter?”

“What the hell does me shaving have to do with our Christmas tree?”  Poe grabbed the handle of the shopping cart, opposite Ben, and leaned over it too to growl, “It’s my tree as much as it is yours, and I don’t want a stuffy, pretentious tree!”

“Well _I_ don’t want a tacky, trashy tree!”

“Are you calling me trashy?!”

“As much as _you’re_ calling _me_ pretentious!”

“Um. . . can I help you two?”  The cheerful, female voice broke through the haze of wrath that had settled over Poe, and he turned his head to see a middle-aged sales associate standing next to their cart, watching them with a little smile.  Poe suddenly realized how stupid he and Ben must look, yelling at each other over the shopping chart with their faces just a few inches apart.  Poe backed off the cart and raked a hand through his hair.  _My messy, curly hair that Ben hates,_ he thought.

“Uh, no, we’ve—we’ve got it,” Poe mumbled.  Ben had stepped away from the cart too and was blushing vividly over his pale cheeks.

“Are you sure?” the associate persisted.  “I’ve been working housewares for years, so I’m pretty good at helping couples compromise on their décor.  Let me guess, you’re a traditionalist—”  She gestured at Ben.  “—and _you’re_ into kitsch,” she finished with a look at Poe.

“Great, now I’m kitschy,” Poe lamented.

“You kind of _are_ ,” muttered Ben. . . then the woman’s exact words sank in, and his blush deepened across his nose.  “But—but we’re not a couple!” he stammered to the associate.  Poe’s eyes widened as he too realized the implication of what she’d said.

“No!  Hell no!” he gasped.  “Geez!”

“Oh!  I’m very sorry.”  Rather than look embarrassed herself, though, the associate just kept on with that same little smile.  “It’s just that you said ‘our tree,’ so I assumed this was your first Christmas together.”

Poe looked down at the innocuous shopping cart in horror and wondered, _Is **that** what this looks like?  Did anyone else see us and think we were together?_

“No, no,” Ben was explaining.  “We just work together.  We’re getting decorations for the office.”

“For the party,” Poe put in, then clarified, “The holiday party.  Next week.  We’re having a party next week.  With presents.  So we need a Christmas tree, to put them under.  ‘We’ meaning the whole office, not just me and him.  So it’s not _our_ tree, it’s the office’s tree—”

“I see,” the associate cut him off.  “But would you like some help anyway?  I could still find you something you can both agree on.”

“No, that’s okay,” Poe mumbled.

At the same time, Ben said, “No thank you.  We’ll—we’ll just get something and go.”

“All right, if you’re sure.”  Her smile grew ever so slightly.  “Just let me know if you need any assistance.”

Poe and Ben stood in a strained silence as the associate walked away, and even for a moment after she was gone.  When Poe finally looked at Ben again, the taller man’s blush had faded.  He glanced at Poe; then they both looked away.

“Um, you can get some other ornaments if you want to,” Ben offered quietly.  “The colored ones or. . . or the shapes.”

“No, that’s okay.  The gold ones are fine,” Poe said in an equally low voice.  “And we don’t have to get the green ones if they’re too. . . too tacky.”

“We can get the green ones too, with the gold ones.  I think they’ll be good together,” murmured Ben.  He put a hand on the end of the shopping cart and tugged it after him as he started up the aisle.  “Let’s get out of here.”  Poe followed but paused at the endcap display of tree toppers.

“Wait, don’t we need to get a star?” he asked.  “Or an angel, or whatever.”

“Better make it a star.”  Ben stopped walking and came back to where Poe stood.  “Angels are too religious.”

“Well so’s the star,” Poe pointed out, “since it’s from Los Reyes Magos.”

“Hunh?”  Ben looked down at him.

“Er, the three wise men, the Magi.  You know, following the star to find the Christ Child,” Poe explained.

“Oh.”  Ben looked embarrassed all over again.  “I thought you said something about Rey.”

Poe snickered, “No, _Reyes_ , kings.  It’s Spanish.  For such a classy guy, you sure don’t have any culture.  The trashy Latino’s gotta explain everything to you.”

“Just pick out a star so we can go,” Ben grumbled.  Poe plucked a gold-tone star topper from the display; then Ben led the way to the checkout, pushing the cart with his head down and his black hair hanging around his face and hiding it from Poe.  Poe assumed Ben was just sulking over not understanding Spanish, but Ben surprised him after they’d loaded their purchases in the car and started back for the office.

“I’m sorry for what I said,” Ben mumbled as he drove.  “You’re not trashy.”

Poe actually felt a little embarrassed for him and protested, “I was just kidding about that.”

“No, but I said—anyway, I didn’t mean it.  I was just pissed off.”  Ben refused to look at Poe, keeping his eyes fixed on the road instead, but he sounded sincere.  “I’m sorry.”

“Then I’m sorry I called you pretentious,” Poe offered.  “And—and I wasn’t trying to make you feel dumb or anything, my family just always called the Magi by their Spanish name, so I didn’t even think about it.”  When Ben didn’t say anything, Poe kept rambling to forestall another awkward silence.  “It’s not like we even really celebrated them—my mom was Guatemalan, and they don’t make a big deal out of El Día de los Reyes, so I always got presents on Christmas instead.”

“Mmn,” said Ben.  Poe stifled a sigh and shut himself up.

_At least he apologized for something,_ he thought as he stared at the window the rest of the way back to the office.  _And we got the decorations without killing each other.  But that still doesn’t solve the problem of finding him a gift. . . and he’ll probably think anything I get him is as tacky as those green ornaments._   It was looking more and more like getting Ben a gift card, boring as that would be, was Poe’s only option.

\--

To be continued


	3. Chapter 3

Ben spent the whole weekend cringing every time he remembered what he’d started to think of as “the Target fiasco.”

_Poe probably thinks I’m a racist snob now,_ he lamented on Sunday night, **_and_** _an idiot._   He was sitting cross-legged on his bed, laptop in front of him and stacks of papers and craft supplies spread out on his black bedspread.  Ben had been trying to work on Poe’s gift, but he kept getting distracted by his own embarrassment.  All weekend, he’d resisted the urge to check Facebook to see if Poe had posted anything disparaging about their shopping trip—and if Poe was even still friends with him—but finally Ben gave in.  He dropped the pair of scissors he’d been using and put his long-fingered hands back on the keyboard.

When he logged in to Facebook, Ben didn’t see any references to the Target fiasco, and Poe remained on his friends list.  What’s more, Ben had a private message waiting.  He looked at the little red icon and wondered if the message could possibly be from Poe.  For some reason, even though he knew Poe was only likely to send a message if he was mad about something, Ben felt a nervous flutter of excitement as he slid the cursor over the message icon and clicked.

The message wasn’t from Poe, and for a second, Ben was disappointed.  But then he realized who _had_ sent the message, someone he’d desperately been hoping to hear from.  Ben breathlessly read what she had written, then with a shaking finger, clicked on the file she had sent.  He felt a wide smile pull at the corners of his mouth, and even though he tried to calm it, it refused to go away.

\--

He wasn’t quite so happy on Monday, when Phasma sat everyone down and started doling out assignments for the party, which would be held that Friday.  Besides bringing a gift for whomever they’d drawn, each person also had to bring something to eat or drink—“And no alcohol!” Phasma growled before anyone could even ask.  Finn gave a tragic sigh.

“Ben, you’re bringing cookies,” Phasma announced.  “Rey—”

“Wait, cookies?” Ben interrupted.  He’d hoped to end up with something easy like napkins or soda.  “What _kind_ of cookies?”

Phasma rolled her eyes and said, “Chris—I mean, _holiday_ cookies.  It’s cookies.  It’s not that hard.”  She moved on down the list while Ben sulked.  He _liked_ cookies, of course, but he tried not to eat too many sweets, and he had no idea what kind anyone else in the office would enjoy.  What’s more, he didn’t bake.  Or cook.  At all.  But there wasn’t any point in trying to explain all that to Phasma, and Ben decided he’d just go to the store for prepackaged cookies the morning of the party.

At the end of the workday, Ben stayed a few minutes late to tidy up his desk.  When he got up to leave, he saw Rey and Poe standing near the front door of the office; Poe was chattering away about something, as usual.  Ben walked past them with his head down, and he cringed when Rey interrupted Poe and spoke to him anyway.

“Ben, are you coming over to help your mom put up the tree tonight?  She invited Dad and me.”

“No,” Ben muttered.  “I have stuff to do.”

“Oh come _on_ ,” Rey protested.  “What do _you_ have to do that’s more important than your family?”  Ben felt his cheeks flush—it was bad enough that Rey was always bugging him about treating his parents better, and now she was scolding him in front of Poe.

He glanced up at Rey and grumbled, “None of your business.  Tell Mom to make Dad help if she needs someone tall.”

Rey rolled her eyes.  “You know that’s not why they want you there.  Anyway, I was thinking you could borrow your mom’s cookie cutters.  She never uses them, just sticks them in a jar for a decoration, so I’m sure she won’t mind.”

“What would I want her cookie cutters for?” muttered Ben.

“Uh, for the cookies you have to bring Friday?”

“I’m going to _buy_ cookies,” Ben informed her, trying not to look at Poe who had been watching the entire exchange.  “I don’t bake, and you know it.”

“Ugh, cookies are the easiest thing in the world,” retorted Rey.  “You can manage them, even if you _don’t_ know how to bake.”  Ben flushed even deeper, but arguing about his cooking abilities (or the lack thereof) would only make him look worse.

“If they’re so easy, _you_ make them,” he told Rey.  “And I’ll bring whatever you got assigned.  Let me guess, plates and napkins?”

“No, I got plates and napkins,” Poe piped up.  “And utensils.”

“Of course you did,” Ben growled under his breath.

Rey spoke over him, “Weren’t you paying attention?  Phasma gave me chips and dip, so I’m gonna make hummus.  If I traded with you, you’d just go buy a jar of salsa, and that wouldn’t be any better than store-bought cookies.”  She picked up the backpack she’d set on the floor and slung it over one shoulder before heading out the front door.  On the way, she glanced back at Ben and said pointedly, “See you tonight.  At your _mother’s_.”

“Go to hell,” Ben muttered, but she had already left.  Ben was halfway out the door himself when he heard Poe’s hesitant voice behind him.

“Uh. . . Ben?”

Ben stopped and looked back.  “Yeah.”

He thought Poe was going to scold him for snapping at Rey, but then Poe said, “I bake.  I like making cookies.”

Ben almost said, “Well good for you,” out of habit, but he swallowed the words.  He didn’t want a repeat of the Target fiasco.

“You want to trade?” he asked instead, hopefully.  “I can bring the plates and stuff.”

Poe smirked and shook his head.  “You’re not getting off _that_ easy—and anyway, my oven’s tiny, and I just have one cookie sheet.”

Now Ben cared a lot less about being polite, and he grumbled, “Then why’d you bring up how much you love to bake?”

Poe’s smirk faltered as he mumbled, “I just thought. . . maybe you wanted some help, that’s all.”

“Help making the cookies?” Ben asked to clarify.  Poe bit his lip then turned and went back to his desk to pick up his jacket.

“Never mind,” he muttered.  “It was a dumb idea.”  Ben suddenly felt guilty without really knowing why.  He made himself take a deep breath and let it out as Poe headed back toward him and the door.

He stopped Poe from leaving with a touch on his arm and said, “Poe, no, it—it’s not.”  Poe blinked up at him, and Ben forced out the words: “I _do_ want some help with the cookies, if you’re offering.”

“Really?” Poe asked.  Then, when Ben nodded, he smiled broadly.  “Okay!  I have a really good recipe for sugar cookies, so if you can get the ingredients, I can show you how to make them, then help you do enough for everyone.”

“Okay,” Ben said.  As nervous as it made him to think of being in close quarters with Poe for that long, it _was_ a solution to the cookie problem. . . and a way to prove to Poe that Ben wasn’t a racist snob after all.

But then Poe looked nervous too, and after a second, he asked, “Uh, do you have a big oven?  And cookie sheets, and a rolling pin?”

“I have two ovens,” Ben admitted.

“Two?” Poe exclaimed.  “And you don’t cook?  What a waste!”  His smile had returned, and Ben realized Poe was teasing him instead of trying to be mean.  For some reason, it made Ben smile too.

“I think I have a baking sheet somewhere,” he added, “but I can borrow some more, and a rolling pin, from my mom—she doesn’t cook much either, but she has all the stuff anyway.  I’ll. . . I’ll get them tonight when I go get those damn cookie cutters,” Ben finished with a sigh.

“Great!”  Poe was _still_ smiling.  “I’ll make a list of the ingredients we need and get that to you tomorrow.  Then after work on Thursday, I could. . . come over for us to make them?”  Poe ended the sentence in a question and cast another nervous glance up at Ben until the taller man nodded.

“Yeah,” murmured Ben.  “That would be fine.”  Poe relaxed and nodded too.  Ben decided the awkward conversation had gone on long enough and went out the door, although he did hold it until Poe came out after him.

“See you tomorrow,” Poe said as he headed for his car.

“Yeah.  . . . Poe?”  When Poe stopped and looked back over his shoulder, Ben said, “Thanks.”  Poe just smiled again.

_What was all that about?_ Ben wondered as he trudged to his own car.  _Why is he being so nice to me?_   Not that Ben didn’t appreciate Poe’s offer of help; he just didn’t understand it.  And now Poe would be coming to his house, and they were going to bake cookies of all things. . . they were going to _bake cookies_.  Together.  Just the two of them.

After Ben got in his driver’s seat, he dropped his forehead down to rest on the steering wheel.

“What was I _thinking_?” he groaned.  “Now I have to bake cookies with Poe _and_ go help Mother decorate.  Rey’s never going to let me hear the end of this.”

\--

On Thursday, the day before the holiday party, Poe hardly accomplished anything at work at all.  He was too nervous.

He’d left the list of cookie ingredients on Ben’s desk on Tuesday, before Ben got to work, and the two hadn’t spoken in all the time in between.  For all Poe knew, Ben had forgotten all about their. . . their. . . their whatever it was, cookie-baking date except it wasn’t a date, more like a. . . a. . . a why-did-Poe-ever-even-suggest-it?  It wasn’t like Ben had ever done anything nice for _him_ , so why had Poe offered to help the guy out?

_I guess I felt sorry for him, the way Rey was picking on him,_ Poe mused just after lunchtime, as he sat at his computer and stared at the monitor without really seeing it.  _He looked so hurt when she said he didn’t have anything better to do than help his mom decorate._   Poe supposed that meant Ben was single, although he still didn’t have a relationship status listed on Facebook, and he never talked about dating one way or the other.  Maybe Ben was alone for the holidays too, and he’d appreciate having some company preparing for the party.

_Of course he’s not alone,_ Poe sulked almost as soon as the idea occurred to him.  _He has a family.  He probably **does** have a girlfriend too, or a boyfriend, he just isn’t the type to share his personal life.  He’s rich and good-looking—he probably has a girlfriend **and** a boyfriend._   Poe snuck a glance over at Ben’s cubicle, just in time to see Ben stand up and walk to the printer.  He’d been growing out his black hair so that it almost brushed his shoulders, and he was wearing slim-fitting black jeans that made his legs look about a million miles long.  As always, Ben looked perfectly put together, dressed all in black, clean-shaven, not a hair out of place.  Except for his oddly large nose and ears, and the occasional bout of clumsiness that made him drop things or trip over his own feet, Ben could have been a fashion model instead of an IT guy.

_And I have to spend the evening alone with him—me, the dumpy, trashy, kitschy guy he hates,_ Poe thought.  When Ben picked up his papers off the printer and started to turn, Poe quickly looked back at his computer before the other man saw him looking.  Poe had shaved that morning and tried to tame his “mess of curls,” as Ben had called them, but he still felt like a frumpy mess.

On top of it all, he still didn’t have a present to give Ben the next day at the party.

_I’ll stop and get a gift card on the way home tonight,_ Poe decided, _and that will be the end of it.  After tomorrow, I won’t have to do anything with him ever again._   With that, Poe forced his attention back to his work and even managed to get some of it done before the end of the workday.

When that time came at 4:45—Phasma actually let them knock off fifteen minutes early so they’d have time to straighten up for the party the next day—Poe finally let himself look at Ben again.  Ben was absorbed with wiping off his already impeccably clean desk, but then he abruptly looked up, straight at Poe.  They stared at each other a second before Ben’s full lips twitched in a faint, hesitant smile.  Poe’s heart thumped with relief, and he grinned back, all too broadly.  Ben turned back to his desk to finish up, then tossed his crumpled paper towel in the wastebasket before approaching Poe.

“Uh, are you still coming over to do the cookies?” Ben asked in a deep mumble.

“Yeah, if—if that’s okay with you,” Poe stammered.

“Yeah, sure,” said Ben, then added, “I. . . appreciate it.  The help I mean.”  He tried the faint smile again.  It was awkward, like Ben wasn’t used to smiling, and somehow that made it kind of cute.

Poe told him, “No problem.  Let me finish cleaning up, then I’ll be ready.”

Ben nodded and then just stood there, so Poe made an ineffectual attempt at straightening up his messy desk, then finally just swept the stacks of papers into a drawer to deal with another day.

“Uh, okay,” he told Ben, “we can go.”

“You can just follow me home, I guess,” Ben said as they left the office together.  Poe noticed Rey eyeing them with a rather smug expression, as if the cookie baking had been _her_ idea and not Poe’s.  _She’ll probably call me tonight and want to know all about it,_ Poe thought bleakly, _like spending a couple hours together is gonna make us best friends or something._   He had no such unrealistic expectations; he just hoped he and Ben could make it through the evening without getting into a screaming match like they had at Target.

Poe followed Ben’s black sports car home in his own beat-up white two-door.  At first he worried he might lose Ben in rush-hour traffic, but almost right away, Ben turned onto a quieter side street and headed for a nearby residential neighborhood.  Soon, Poe was driving through one of the city’s historical districts.  Ben pulled into the driveway of a small, tidy grey house that looked like it could hold no more than two bedrooms.  Nevertheless, it was a lot nicer than Poe’s grungy apartment, and he felt out of place as he parked his car behind Ben’s.  Poe pulled a comb out of his pocket and leaned up to look at his reflection in the rearview mirror while he combed his hair, trying to smooth out the curls and make them lie flat.  As soon as the comb’s teeth passed through each lock of hair, though, the curl sprung right back into place.  Poe gave up and shoved the comb back in his pocket as he climbed out of the car.

The day was cold even for December, and Poe shivered in his thin coat while he waited for Ben to get the front door unlocked.  When they finally got inside, Poe looked around with curiosity he didn’t even try to cover up.  The house was as clean inside as out, but Ben had little furniture and hardly any personal effects at all.  In fact, the house barely looked lived in.  The front door opened into a living room where Ben had a sofa, coffee table, and large flat-screen, and not much else.  Yet Poe did notice a shelf full of video games in the TV stand, including some he enjoyed himself.

_Who’d’ve thought he liked video games?_ Poe marveled.

The kitchen was right behind the living room, with a laundry room off of that.  A little hallway with three closed doors led off of the side of the living room, and Poe assumed one of those doors led to Ben’s bedroom.  Throughout the parts of the house he could see, Poe couldn’t find any signs that Ben was dating anyone—no photos or items that could have belonged to a girl (or guy, other than Ben himself).  But then Poe didn’t see any photos of Ben’s own family, either, so he supposed it didn’t prove anything.

_And why should I care if he’s dating anyone or not?_ Poe scolded himself as he followed Ben into the kitchen.  On the counter, Ben had set out the ingredients he’d bought from Poe’s list, and he stopped there to look down at the shorter man.

“Uh, is this stuff okay?” Ben asked.

Poe looked over everything and nodded.  “Sure.  Um, we’re gonna need those cookie sheets you borrowed.  And. . . you have a big bowl, don’t you?”

“You didn’t say anything about a bowl,” Ben informed him.  Poe looked back up at him nervously, expecting Ben to launch into another tirade about how worthless Poe was, but Ben just smirked and said, “But yeah, I do at least keep bowls around.”  Poe stared at him until Ben looked away, embarrassed, and knelt to dig a large mixing bowl out of a cabinet.

_He was trying to be funny,_ Poe realized.

While Ben gathered the bowl, cookie sheets, cookie cutters, and other utensils they’d need, Poe started both ovens preheating.  They were impressive, large and stacked vertically with digital controls.  In fact, _everything_ in Ben’s kitchen was impressive, if obviously little-used.  Although the kitchen was fairly small, all of the appliances were expensive ones.

“It really is a shame you don’t cook very much,” Poe commented, trying to make neutral small talk.  “Your kitchen is great.”

“My parents never cooked much either,” said Ben.  “Rey keeps trying to teach me, but she always gives up and says I’m not patient enough.”

Poe protested, “I’m not patient either, and I can do it!  I bet you can learn—c’mere and I’ll show you how to make the dough.  Oh, we gotta wash our hands first though. . . .”

After doing that (and noticing that Ben’s hand soap smelled like lavender), Ben stood beside Poe and watched as he started to mix the ingredients (while noticing that now Ben smelled like lavender too, which proved to be a distraction).  By the time the dough was ready and Poe made Ben roll it out flat with the rolling pin, the ovens had finished preheating.

“Now what?” Ben asked.  Despite his earlier comment, he didn’t sound impatient at all.

“Now the fun part! We get to cut them out and decorate them!”  Poe shot him a grin, then grabbed some leftover flour and dumped a handful on the wax paper Ben had used to cover the counter.  “Rub the cookie cutters in the flour before you use them, so the dough won’t stick to them so bad.”

Ben followed his instructions, and they began producing doughy shapes that were generally holiday-related without being overtly Christmassy: snowmen and snowflakes, stars, and candy canes.  Ben wasn’t sure about the candy canes, but Poe declared them non-denominational and therefore safe.  He drew the line at Santa Claus, angels, and dreidels though.

“Hey, uh. . . ,” Poe began as he paused over the dreidel cookie cutter; then he realized that the last thing he needed was to start an argument over religion when things had been going so well.

“What?” Ben asked.  He lifted the snowman cookie cutter, then swore, “Damn,” when the dough comprising the snowman’s hat came with it, leaving the rest of Frosty behind on the wax paper.

“Nothing,” mumbled Poe.

“No, what?” insisted Ben.  He flicked the dough hat out of the cookie cutter, then looked at Poe.

“It’s not important,” Poe protested, but when Ben’s expression turned exasperated, Poe gave in and muttered, “Are you Jewish?  I never even thought that maybe you didn’t celebrate Christmas, and. . . well, when we bought the tree and all. . . .”

“Oh.”  Ben shrugged as he went back to work on the snowman cookie.  “The tree was a _holiday_ tree, not a Christmas tree, per Phasma.  And anyway, my dad’s Jewish, but my mom’s family, the side Rey’s on, is Protestant.  We always did Hanukkah _and_ Christmas at my house, so I dunno _what_ I am, really.  I guess Protestant as far as the religion part goes, but I like my Jewish heritage too.”  He broke off and glanced down at Poe again, who was listening with rapt attention.  “Sorry, I know you don’t care.”

Poe blinked and stammered, “No, I do!  I mean, I _asked_ you, and it’s interesting!  I just. . . I was afraid maybe I’d said something offensive and not realized it.”

“Poe, if it makes you feel any better, it’s quite clear you’re not a raging anti-Semite,” Ben told him drily.  This time Poe got right away that Ben was being funny. . . at least, Poe was pretty sure he was.

“Well, I know,” Poe said, “but. . . I just feel kind of dumb is all, not to realize that obviously, you’re Jewish.  Or part Jewish.”

“Obviously?”  Ben turned to face Poe and arched a dark eyebrow.  “Why obviously?  Is it my nose?”  Poe’s face burned, and he wondered if he’d ever learn when to shut his big mouth.  The best he could do was to keep opening it until something came out that would smooth things over.

“I-I didn’t—I didn’t mean. . . just your name, Benjamin. . . I mean, I guess your full name’s Benjamin, I don’t really know, and. . . well yeah, your nose is kind of big but so’s mine, and I’m not Jewish, I’m Latino, so—”  Poe finally fell silent, bewildered, when Ben cracked up.

“Poe, I was _joking_ ,” he said when he quit laughing.  “Why’re you so scared of pissing me off?  Not like it ever bothered you before.”

“I. . . I just didn’t want to screw this up,” Poe muttered.  He scooped up the cookie he’d just cut out and slid it into the last open spot on the cookie sheet they were filling.  “Here, it’s full.  We need to decorate them so they can start baking.”

Not distracted in the least, Ben asked, “Screw _what_ up?”

“Us getting along,” mumbled Poe as he picked up a bottle of white crystal sugar and began sprinkling it on a snowflake.  “I always end up saying stuff to offend you, and I don’t mean to, but you get so mad at me, and then I get mad too and I _do_ want to offend you.  So I say worse stuff that isn’t even true, and—”  Realizing he was rambling all over again, Poe stopped and shook his head hard.  “Never _mind_.  It doesn’t matter.”

Ben kept quiet for several minutes after that.  He decorated his repaired snowman and helped with the other cookies; then Poe put the cookie sheet in the top oven.  While Poe’s back was turned, Ben started rolling out more dough and grumbling when it kept sticking to the rolling pin.

“Here, sprinkle some more flour on it,” Poe said when he turned back.  He demonstrated, and the dough quit sticking.

“Poe, it does matter,” Ben said abruptly.  Poe looked at him, but Ben’s head was bent and his hair obscured his face as he focused on cutting out more cookies.  “I know I get mad too easily.  I always have.  And I’m sorry, I never wanted you to be. . . _afraid_ of me.  But sometimes it feels like you’re just waiting for me to mess up so you can remind me how much better you are than I am.”

Poe had turned back to the cookie dough, but at that, he dropped the cutter he was holding and stared up at Ben again.  Feeling his gaze, Ben stopped working, swallowed audibly, then turned to look back at the smaller man.

“Ben, what—what are you _talking_ about?” Poe gasped.  “You think I think I’m _better_ than you?  How. . . how could you think that?”

“Because you _are_ ,” Ben said in the quietest voice Poe had ever heard him use.

“What?!  _No!_   You—you have a nicer house, and a nicer car, and—and better taste and a _family_ and I’m just. . . .”  Poe gestured absently at himself with one hand and smiled without any humor at all.  “I’m a mess.  I have great friends and I know how to make cookies from scratch, but that’s literally all I have going for me.”

“Poe, I don’t—”  Ben stopped and bit his lip.  He looked down at Poe, and Poe looked up at him.

“I shouldn’t even be here.  I was right before when I said this was a dumb idea,” sighed Poe.  “I was trying to help you.  I was trying to be nice.”

Ben released his lip and said, “Poe, you _are_ nice.”  Suddenly, he put both hands on Poe’s shoulders and squeezed them.  Ben’s hands felt impossibly large and warm, even through the thermal shirt Poe was wearing.  Ben repeated, “You _are_ nice, and that’s why you’re better than me.  I can’t be around my family for ten minutes without fighting with them, and all the other things. . . having _things_ doesn’t matter if there isn’t any meaning behind them.  Like at Christmas—my family gives me lots of presents, sure, but they’re all gift cards or clothes or, hell, my dad just gives me straight up money because he wouldn’t know the first thing about what I’d actually _like_.  And. . . I guess I wouldn’t know that about him either, it’s my fault as much as his.”

Then Ben sighed, and the grip of his hands lessened.  They slipped from Poe’s shoulders to his upper arms where they held on loosely.

“I don’t even know what I’m trying to say.  I’m sorry, I shouldn’t complain because you’re right, I have a family, and that’s important.  I just meant that. . . I don’t want to screw things up with you either, but I always do.  You’re a wonderful person, Poe, and even though I’ve always been jealous of you, I wish we could’ve been friends.”

Ben let go of Poe’s arms, and Poe realized that letting go was just about the last thing he wanted Ben to do.  He liked how Ben’s hands felt on him, almost as much as he liked hearing Ben call him “nice” and “wonderful.”

“Ben, we _can_ be friends,” Poe protested.  Before Ben could drop his arms, Poe hugged him, hard.  He didn’t think he’d ever so much as touched Ben before, but the larger man felt good against him as Poe put his arms around Ben’s broad back and pressed his cheek to Ben’s chest.  Hugging his former worst enemy wasn’t exactly the most manly thing Poe could have done, but it made him feel warm all over.

Poe went on, mumbling into Ben’s sweater, “Just tell me if I say something that pisses you off, okay, instead of losing your temper, and I’ll do the same for you.  If we both try hard enough not to be stubborn assholes, it’ll work, you see.”

Ben had frozen in place as soon as Poe touched him, but now his whole body trembled, then he broke out into gentle laughter.  Poe felt Ben’s arms encircle him, and for some insane reason, Poe never wanted him to let go.

“Okay.  Don’t be a stubborn asshole.  It’s a tall request, but I’ll try,” Ben chuckled.  Before Poe could think of something clever to reply, the timer on Ben’s oven dinged, signaling it was already time to get the first batch of cookies out.

“Damn,” Poe breathed.

“Yeah, we haven’t even finished cutting out the second batch,” Ben muttered as he let go of Poe and went to the oven.

“We’d better get to work,” said Poe, even though he’d sworn because the timer meant he had to leave Ben’s arms, not because they still had a lot of cookies to make.

With another hour of work, they turned all their dough into cookies and packed them in a large piece of Tupperware Ben’s mother had lent him.  Poe thought that Ben’s cookies looked prettier than his own; Ben had proved to be surprisingly artistic with the colored sugar.  When he complimented Ben on them, however, Ben only muttered that his cookies weren’t any better than Poe’s, and no one would care what they looked like anyway, just how they tasted.

Poe helped Ben clean up the kitchen when the cookies were finished.  He wished he had some excuse to stay even longer than that; he didn’t want to leave Ben’s warm, cookie-scented house and go home alone to his own little apartment.  But Ben had hardly talked to Poe at all while they cleaned, and the pale skin under his eyes was starting to show dark circles.

_He’s tired,_ Poe realized, _and I’m sure he doesn’t want me hanging around keeping him up._   As soon as the kitchen was clean, Poe mumbled something about needing to get home and headed for the front door.

“Poe?” Ben called from where he stood in the doorway to the kitchen.  “Thanks again for helping me with the cookies.  I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Eh, you would’ve been fine,” Poe mumbled.  “Yours turned out really good.”  When he glanced back at Ben, the other man was watching him.  Poe saw Ben’s throat shift as he swallowed.

“I guess, but I wouldn’t have even tried without _you_ ,” Ben said.  The faint smile he gave Poe made Poe smile again too.

“Glad to help,” Poe said.  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah.  Good night, Poe.”  Something in Ben’s voice made Poe want to stay more than ever.  Ben’s voice, and his dark eyes, and his pretty mouth—

“G’night, Ben,” Poe said quickly, and he hurried out the door.

_What the hell is wrong with me?_ Poe demanded of himself as he got in his car and peeled out of Ben’s driveway.  _I’ve—I’ve got a crush on him, on **Ben**!  We’re hardly even friends, how could I even think about him like **that**?_

Poe firmly turned his thoughts away from anything resembling romance and instead remembered what Ben had said about gifts: “Having _things_ doesn’t matter if there isn’t any meaning behind them. . . my family gives me lots of presents, sure, but they’re all gift cards or clothes. . . .”

_I can’t give him a gift card after he said that,_ thought Poe.  _I have to give him a present that means something. . ._ and of course Poe knew what present that would be.  The idea had occurred to him several times over the past month, but Poe had always dismissed it.  Give his most treasured possession away?  To _Ben Solo_?  It was ridiculous.

“But it’s the only gift that _would_ mean something to him,” Poe whispered, “that I could give him, anyway.  And I don’t need it to remember. . . .”

By the time Poe got home, he’d convinced himself, and the idea excited more than saddened him.  He gathered up the plates and other supplies he’d bought for the party, then went to his bedroom and took the Meatwagon down off his closet shelf.

“Don’t worry, buddy,” he told the toy Power Wagon.  “Ben’ll take good care of you—not a speck of dust in his whole house.  And he’s wanted you his whole life.  He’ll love you, I know it.”

Poe dug a large gift bag out of the stash he had in another closet and tucked the Meatwagon inside.  He peeked in at the plastic van one last time, then carefully taped the bag shut and set it by the door with the party supplies.  As he munched on a sandwich in front of the television then took a shower and got ready for bed, Poe wondered who had drawn _his_ name, and what kind of gift they might give him.

_Probably a gift card,_ he thought with a wry smile.

After he got into bed, Poe realized he’d left the closet door open.  When his eyes had adjusted to the near-dark in his room, he could see the empty shelf where the Meatwagon was supposed to be sitting.  That vacant space felt creepier and more _wrong_ than the toy van’s demon-eyed headlights ever had.  Poe hauled himself out of bed to close the closet door, then burrowed back under the covers again.

_Maybe this is a mistake,_ he thought. . . but then he remembered Ben hugging him and saying, “You’re a wonderful person, Poe. . . .  I wish we could’ve been friends.”

_Wonderful people make sacrifices,_ Poe told himself, _and so do friends.  Maybe I’ll never have a good Christmas, but I want Ben to. . . I want him to have one because of me._   He yawned and snuggled his cheek into his pillow, which didn’t feel half as nice as Ben’s chest had.  _I want him to be happy. . . because of me. . . ._   By the time he drifted to sleep, Poe had decided he wasn’t making a mistake at all.

\--

To be continued


	4. Chapter 4

When he got to work on Friday morning, Poe left Ben’s gift under the tree they had picked out, and put his party supplies in the office’s little breakroom.  He got about as much work done that day as he had the day before: instead of working, he kept wondering if Ben really would like his present.  What if Rey had misremembered which Power Wagon Ben had always wanted?  Or what if Ben had stopped wanting toy cars for Christmas once he hit thirty?  What if he thought Poe was making fun of him by giving him the Meatwagon?

The day crept by, but finally afternoon came.  Because the office would be closed for the next week, until after New Year’s, everyone had to wrap up their ongoing projects before the party began, an hour ahead of closing time.  Poe was one of the first finished, so he started setting out the food in the breakroom along with the plates and other supplies he’d brought.  By the time the snacks were ready, the rest of the employees had completed their work too and cleared out an open space in the office around the tree.  While the others descended on the breakroom to tear into the food, Poe snuck out to the tree and poked around until he found the gift with his name on it.

If it was a gift card, its giver had gone to great lengths to disguise it: the package was a flat, square box about a foot long on each side and wrapped in dark red wrapping paper etched with a tasteful gold foil pattern.  An envelope taped to the front had Poe’s name written on it in matching gold ink.  Poe didn’t recognize the handwriting, a small and tidy cursive.

“What the heck?” Poe muttered to himself.  He picked up the package and gave it a little shake.  It didn’t rattle, but it felt kind of heavy, like a book maybe.  Maybe one of those coffee table gift books?  Poe couldn’t imagine anyone in the office getting him one of those, but he also couldn’t imagine what else it could be.  He finally decided he’d just have to wait to find out what it was, and he put the package back where he’d found it and headed for the breakroom before all the food was gone.

Just outside the door, Poe heard Finn’s cheerful voice saying, “Ben, you brought the cookies?  They’re really good!”  He sounded a little surprised.

“He actually _made_ them,” Rey told Finn.  “And yeah, Ben, they turned out good.”  Poe hung back and smiled a little—rather smugly, in fact—to know that _he_ was responsible for the cookies turning out so well.

But then, Ben said something that made Poe’s mouth fall open in surprise: “Yeah, I made them, but Poe helped me.”

“ _Poe?_ ”  Finn sounded about as surprised as Poe felt.  “I thought you hated him.  When’d you guys make cookies together?”  Ben muttered something and stalked out of the room a second later, going right past Poe without even seeing him.  Nevertheless, Poe felt happy that Ben hadn’t taken credit for the cookies himself.

Poe grabbed a couple cookies and a soda from the breakroom, then followed everyone else back into the office.  He rolled his chair up near the tree to sit by Finn, who was munching on a cookie and eying the stack of gifts.

“I guess we still like getting presents, no matter how old we get,” Poe observed with a pointed lifting of one eyebrow.

“Well yeah, but mostly I wanna know who drew my name,” Finn explained.  “That’s the best part of this whole thing, seeing who got stuck with who.”

“Yeah, the ‘best’ part,” Poe muttered.  Rey smirked at him over Finn’s head before she sat down on the other side of her boyfriend.

The present exchange had to wait a while, though.  Their boss, Mr. Hux, came in from his private office carrying a stack of envelopes that drew everyone’s attention far more than the gifts under the tree did: they held the staff’s holiday bonus checks.  He distributed them calmly while everyone pretended to be not that interested in what the envelopes contained.  Yet as soon as Hux went to the breakroom to get something to eat, Finn and Rey both ripped into theirs.  Poe shrugged and opened his too, ignoring the disdainful looks Phasma and Ben gave them all.

“Fifty dollars, like last year,” said Finn.  He sounded a bit disappointed, but Poe was delighted with the amount, which he could certainly use.  Finn asked Rey, “That what you got too?”

As Rey nodded, Phasma rolled her eyes and said, “Of course we’re all going to get the same amount—it would be tacky otherwise.  And speaking of tacky, you should have waited until you got home to open them.”

“Like you aren’t as interested in money as the rest of us are,” Rey retorted.  Before the argument could go any farther, Hux emerged from the breakroom, and everyone pretended they hadn’t been talking about the checks at all.

For the next few minutes, Poe focused on his plate to avoid having to join in the small talk around him.  He was too nervous about what Ben would think when he opened his gift; in fact, he didn’t dare even to look at Ben.  It didn’t help that Poe kept remembering how nice it had felt when Ben hugged him the day before, and when Ben told him he was a wonderful person.

_Will he still think that when he opens his present?_ Poe asked himself.  _Will he understand what it means?_

Finally, Hux looked at his watch and suggested that if they got through with the present-opening in time, they could leave work early for the holiday.  Behind his back, Phasma gave him a glare that clearly questioned why Hux hadn’t mentioned that earlier; then she stood up and went over to the tree.

“Any particular order you want us to open in, boss?” she muttered.  “Or should I just grab something?”

“Grab something,” said Hux, who didn’t seem especially interested in gifts, just in getting them open so he could leave.  Phasma shrugged and picked up the present closest to her—which happened to be the one with Poe’s name on it.  She glanced at the front of the card then stepped close enough to hand it to him.

“You first, Poe,” Phasma said.  Poe nodded and took the package, trying to hide a smile of pleasure at getting to go first.  _Guess I really didn’t ever grow up,_ he thought wryly.

“Who’s it from?” Finn asked.  Poe had been about to tear open the paper and check out the card afterwards—he cared more about finding out what the odd, square gift was, than who had given it to him—but he stopped and pulled off the envelope.

“Nice wrapping paper,” Rey observed.  Between her and Finn’s fascination with his gift, Poe assumed that it was from one of them, even though Rey had denied drawing his name.  Then he opened the envelope and pulled out the card inside.  It matched the wrapping paper, with a gold filigree design on nice cardstock. . . and Ben’s name signed inside.

Poe stared at the inscription.  It was more than Ben’s name, actually: it read, “Merry Christmas, Poe.  From Ben,” written in the same gold ink and tidy handwriting as Poe’s name on the envelope.  For some reason, even though the message was quite generic, Poe felt himself blush.

“Well?” Finn prompted.  Poe’s eyes flicked up and focused on Ben, but the other man was staring down at his own shoes.  Poe looked away again and shoved the card back in its envelope.

“It’s from Ben,” he muttered.

“Uh oh,” said Finn, but he was the only one who commented.  As Poe, now reluctant, slid a finger under the edge of the wrapping paper and began to tear it open, he realized why no one else was surprised.  Hux didn’t care about the politics in his office in the least, as long as work got done, so the significance of Ben drawing Poe’s name would be lost on him.  Ben himself was trying to pretend that the whole thing had nothing to do with him, and Rey. . . Ben had probably asked Rey for help in choosing a present, just like Poe had.  So she already knew.

_That leaves Phasma,_ Poe thought while he worked the paper open down the back of the package.  _And she isn’t surprised because—because I bet she rigged this whole thing!  What’re the odds that Ben and I would have drawn each other’s names by chance?_   He tried to hide his scowl, but it faded all on its own when he finally got the thick wrapping paper open, mostly because of his surprise.

Ben’s gift to him _was_ a book, specifically a large, square album.  Like the foil on the paper and the ink on the card, its cover was gold, but of a softer, muted shade and covered with protective clear vinyl.

“It’s a photo album,” Poe murmured.  He was bewildered at Ben’s choice of gifts, and maybe a little disappointed at how impersonal it was, but he supposed it could be worse.  He glanced up at Ben and smiled.  “Thanks, Ben.”

Ben finally met Poe’s gaze, but only to scowl himself.  Poe felt hurt until Ben rolled his eyes and said, “Well, go on, _open_ it.”

“Oh!”  Poe flushed and smiled again, bashfully, and that time, Ben smiled back, just a little.  Poe dropped the wrapping paper on the floor by his feet—making sure to hang on to the card—and opened the cover of the album.  Then he breathed, “Oh,” again and stared down at the page before him.

His own face looked back up at him—his face from more than twenty years ago captured in a school portrait, one of the many photographs destroyed in the fire that had taken Poe’s home and killed his mother.  Seeing the photo made Poe remember the very day it had been taken, how his mother had made him wear his nicest clothes and promise not to get them dirty, at least not before he had his picture taken.  Poe was smiling, very dark after a summer spent outside playing, with a mop of curly brown hair a few shades lighter than it would become as he grew up.

Poe cast a bewildered glance over at Ben, but now Ben was looking away again.  Their coworkers all looked at Poe, though, all of them except Rey appearing rather puzzled.

Poe turned back to the album and flipped through several of the pages.  All of them had photos on them, and they were all photos from Poe’s childhood, some of him alone and others of Poe with his friends and classmates: at birthday parties and school assemblies, field trips and Sunday school Easter egg hunts.  None showed Poe with his family at home or on the few vacations they took, but Poe was awed all the same.

_Where did he get these?_ Poe marveled.  _How did. . . how did Ben do this?_   He wanted to ask, but not in front of everybody else.

“Uh, Poe?” Finn asked after a minute.  “What is—”

“Shh!” Rey shushed him in a hiss.  “I’ll tell you later!”  Finn fell silent, and Phasma and Hux exchanged bemused glances but didn’t say anything.  Poe flipped through the rest of the album, although he didn’t look at every page just yet.  It would have been too overwhelming.

“Thank you, Ben,” he mumbled again.  “I. . . I really—”  He broke off in a literal gasp as he reached the last page in the album.  The photo there was different from the others, a full sized 8x10 studio portrait, and it showed Poe’s whole family: Poe at the age of about six, his father. . . and his mother.

Seeing his mother’s face for the first time since her death, Poe’s eyes flooded with tears.  To him, she looked beautiful and happy, exactly how he remembered her.  He gritted his teeth to hold back the cry he felt rising in his throat, and he slammed the album shut, closing his eyes at the same time and holding them that way until the tears dissolved.  For that moment, he forgot all about Ben, and Poe didn’t wonder how the other man could possibly have found the photograph.  It was all he could cope with to keep from crying in front of his coworkers, and to resist the urge to get up and just walk out of the party, to run off somewhere that he could be alone and look at his family’s picture and sob.

Poe felt a little shiver work through his body; then he finally got control of himself and opened his eyes again.  To his relief, no one was staring at him.  All the others had already looked away out of awkward politeness, despite how confused they must be, and Phasma was rummaging under the tree to get the next gift to be opened.  Rey cast Poe one concerned glance, but then she was distracted by Phasma bringing her a package.

Poe tucked the card from his gift back into its envelope, then slid it inside the front cover of the album before gripping the edges of the book with both hands.  He didn’t want to let go of it even for a moment, because he felt like it might disappear.  It was just too improbable to be real.

As his coworkers watched Rey opening her present—a copy of _Lean In_ from Phasma, for which Rey thanked her in a somewhat baffled tone—Poe snuck a look at Ben.  He was slumped back in his chair, arms folded across his chest, frowning as he watched Rey.

Poe realized, _He probably thinks I don’t like his gift!_   As embarrassed as he was at nearly crying in front of everyone, Ben in particular, Poe tried to catch the other man’s eye.  Yet Ben refused to look at him, and Poe gave up with a quiet sigh.

Phasma brought Ben’s present to him last.  Poe didn’t know if that was deliberate or just chance, but he grew impatient as everyone else opened their gifts and Poe had to keep waiting.  He wanted to witness Ben’s reaction when he saw his present, and then Poe wanted to escape.  But first he watched Hux open an envelope from Rey (containing a gift card to a restaurant Poe had never heard of), Phasma open a small box from Finn (containing a Newton’s Cradle—when Phasma gave Finn a blank stare, he said helplessly, “You like shiny things, right?  I didn’t know what else to get you!”), and Finn open an envelope from Hux (also a gift card, this one to Best Buy).  Then, finally, Phasma picked up the gift bag Poe had brought in, and she carried it over to Ben.

“Last one,” she announced as she returned to her chair.  “And it has to be from Poe.”

“Yes, it does, doesn’t it?” Rey muttered with a sharp look at the other woman.  Phasma ignored her.

Ben finally glanced at Poe, but only for a second before he looked down at the large gift bag Phasma had set in front of him.  Poe bit his lip and watched as Ben slid his thumb between the edges of the bag to pop the tape Poe had used to seal it.  Then he opened the bag and looked inside.

Poe stopped breathing.  A blush started across Ben’s cheekbones and spread over his whole face as he stared down into the gift bag; then he snapped the bag shut and knotted the string handles together to hold it closed.  Poe’s held breath came out shaky, because he felt like crying all over again.

“Ben?” Rey asked.  “What is it?”  Ben lifted his head and gave her such a glare, even she didn’t push the issue further.  Now Poe was the one to slump back in his chair, but he was certain he felt far worse than Ben did.

_He hated it, I gave him the most precious thing I have, and he hated it,_ Poe thought.  He couldn’t even look at Ben any longer; instead, he stared down at the album he still clutched in his hands.  The photo of his family, of his mother was precious too, of course, but that almost made things worse.  Ben had given Poe something so special, and Poe had tried to do the same. . . .  _But he doesn’t understand.  Maybe he thinks I’m making fun of him or something, or maybe the toy he always wanted doesn’t mean anything to him anymore.  I thought maybe we could be friends, and I ruined it.  I thought maybe we could be more someday. . . ._

Realizing that, finally understanding what he really wanted from Ben, made the tears start again in Poe’s eyes.  He got up from his chair, holding his album tightly to his chest like Ben might take it back from him, and stalked off to the breakroom.

“Poe?” Finn called after him, but Poe waved him off with a hand over his shoulder.

“‘M going to clean up,” he growled.  Once he was safely ensconced in the other room, Poe closed the door all but a crack. . . then put his ear to it to listen to what the others said about him, him and Ben.

“What the hell is wrong with you two?” Phasma was snapping, apparently at Ben.  “Can’t you even get along for the holidays?”

Then Rey in a tired groan: “Just let it go, Phasma.  You too, Finn.”

“I didn’t say anything!” Finn protested.

Poe was actually glad when he heard Hux dismiss the whole ordeal: “Never mind, let’s just get this. . . party mess cleaned up.  I’m sure we all have other places to be.”

Poe tidied up the breakroom slowly, although there wasn’t really much work to do.  Most of the food was gone, so he threw away the disposable serving ware and handed back various glass plates or stainless utensils when their owners came timidly to the door to collect them.  Everyone seemed to be afraid of upsetting Poe, which only upset him even _more_.  Worst of all, Ben’s mother’s Tupperware container sat there on the counter with a handful of cookies left inside.  Poe remained tense, expecting Ben to come claim it at any moment, but he never showed up, not even by the time Poe had finished cleaning.  Even after everything was cleaned up, Poe stayed there in the breakroom another couple minutes, dreading having to speak to Ben but at the same time not wanting to see any of the others.  Then, finally, he slipped back out into the office.

As Poe had hoped, everyone else had already gone. . . including Ben, who had left without taking his mother’s Tupperware.

_I hope she yells at him for leaving it here,_ Poe thought.

He went to his desk to get his jacket and phone.  The message light was flashing, and when he checked it, he saw that both Rey and Finn had texted him.  He didn’t look at the messages; that could wait until he was more capable of a civil reply.  As he walked toward the door, Poe realized that, although all the wrapping paper and other trappings of the holidays had been cleaned up, no one had unplugged the tree he and Ben had bought.  It stood forlorn and alone. . . _and a fire hazard,_ Poe thought.

Poe walked over to the wall to pull the plug, but then he stopped and really looked at the tree: the white lights Ben had insisted on, the green ornaments Poe had picked out and the gold ones Ben had chosen.

_It looks pretty,_ he realized.  _We did a good job together on the tree. . . and the cookies, they were good too.  Maybe we really could have been good together._

“Or not,” Poe muttered aloud as he turned and unplugged the tree.  Maybe his feelings for Ben really were growing to something more than a crush, but Ben clearly didn’t feel the same way.

When Poe trudged out into the parking lot, it was empty except for two cars: his old white two-door sedan. . . and Ben’s sleek black sports car.  Poe frowned and glanced back at the building, then shrugged and went to his car, tugging his jacket closer around him against the cold.  That late in the year, it was almost dark already, even though it was still early evening.

_Ben must still be inside, maybe back in the plant somewhere.  Maybe he’ll remember his mom’s Tupperware after all,_ Poe thought.  He unlocked his car and got in, shoved the key in the ignition, turned it. . . and was greeted with a grinding rumble, then silence.

“Fuck, no,” Poe growled under his breath.  He tried again, then again, but his car refused to start.  He’d been meaning to replace the battery for a while, and that evening’s cold had apparently been too much for it.  Poe groaned, “Dammit, _dammit_!” and bent over the steering wheel with both fists clutched over it.  He didn’t have AAA, and calling a tow truck or mechanic on the Friday night before Christmas would cost way more than he could afford.

_I’ll have to call a cab to get home, and just leave my car here,_ realized Poe.  _Then go get a new battery tomorrow, on Christmas Eve—and hope that’s all that’s wrong with it._   Normally, he might have called one of his friends to pick him up, but he didn’t think he was up to facing Rey or Finn—or worse, both of them, since they would probably insist on coming together.  Thoughts of dealing with a taxi driver, of replacing the battery, of how a cab and new battery would eat up most of his holiday bonus check—they were all too much, as emotionally strained as Poe already was.  He dropped his forehead on the steering wheel and shivered as he started to cry.

\--

To be continued


	5. Chapter 5

When Phasma mentioned that someone needed to lock up the delivery doors in the back of the plant, Ben was happy to volunteer—it meant he could hide out until Poe finished in the breakroom and left, so Ben wouldn’t have to talk to him.  He took his gift back with him to keep any of his officemates—especially Rey—from peeking at it.

Ben’s footsteps echoed as he trudged through the deserted plant; the workers there had gotten to go home for the holidays at noon.  Ben padlocked the sliding delivery door and double-checked that everything had been put away for the holiday break.  Everything had, except for a clipboard someone had left on the floor next to the door.  Ben grumbled and bent to pick it up.  The top sheet contained a list of the deliveries scheduled for the first day the plant would be open after New Year’s. . . and of course the list was in Poe’s messy handwriting, which Ben recognized since Poe insisted on writing most of his notes and memos with a pen rather than typing them like anyone else in the twenty-first century would do.

“Would it kill him to be organized for once?” Ben muttered.  His own deep voice sounded so loud in the empty space, it startled him.  He ran his thumb over the paper, feeling the indentations Poe’s pen had made as he wrote; then seeing Poe’s handwriting made him wonder if Poe had put a card on Ben’s gift.  Ben had been too flustered to notice.

He hung the clipboard where it belonged, on a nail hammered into the wall, then crouched down beside the gift bag he’d set down near the door.  No, there wasn’t a card, but the gift _must_ be from Poe.  Like Phasma had said. . . Phasma who had apparently rigged the whole thing, judging from the smug look on her face when she said it.

_Then she got so frustrated when Poe stormed out,_ Ben remembered.  _She was annoyed her plan didn’t work, because she was trying to make us get along.  Maybe it **would** have worked if I had just gotten him a normal present instead of trying to. . . trying to do something special._   He stared at the knotted strings of the bag as he thought about the look on Poe’s face when he first opened the album Ben had spent the last few weeks making.  Poe’s beautiful eyes had widened, opening all the way like they almost never did, and he had looked so stunned.  He hadn’t quite smiled, but when Ben snuck another look at him, as Poe flipped through the pages of photos, he had seemed happy.  Until the last one.

“I’m so fucking stupid,” Ben growled.  “I made him _cry_.  He’ll never forgive me.”  That much was obvious from how Poe had slammed the album shut, how he had kept silent during the rest of the gift exchange, and how he had bolted from the room as soon as Ben had seen his gift.  When Ben thought of the tears in those eyes that usually seemed so warm, when he thought that the tears were all _his_ fault, he hated himself.

And then, _then_ there was Poe’s gift to him.  Ben clenched his hands into fists over the top of the gift bag, but even though he’d sworn to wait to look at it when he got home, he couldn’t.

He picked at the knots in the bag’s strings with his long fingers until they finally came loose and he could reach into the bag and pull out his gift.  _His_ gift, the only thing he’d ever wanted and never gotten, the thing that, somehow, Poe Dameron of all people knew to give him.

“The Meatwagon,” murmured Ben.  At the moment, he didn’t consider how dumb (not to mention almost obscene) the name was.  To him, it represented all the resentment he’d held toward his parents and Rey over the years.  Even though he could have afforded to buy the thing for himself by now, Ben never had.  It just wouldn’t be the same, and anyway, it was just a stupid early-midlife-crisis thing, wasn’t it, the way other guys in their thirties bought back their comic books or G.I. Joes or whatever in an attempt to recover their lost youth.  Ben had sworn he’d never be _that_ guy.

But then Poe had gotten it for him, and the stupid plastic toy van Ben had always coveted took on a whole new meaning.  He didn’t think Poe had a lot of money, and he knew Meatwagons went for hundreds of dollars on eBay—and that was the beat up ones!  This one wasn’t quite like new, but it was still in very good condition.  Where had Poe gotten it?  And how had he known?

The second question was easier to answer than the first, and Ben muttered Rey’s name as he stared into the car’s evilly narrowed headlights.  Poe must have asked for Rey’s help in choosing a gift, just as Ben had, and she must have told him about the one thing Ben had always wanted but never gotten for Christmas.  And then Poe had made Ben’s dream come true, silly dream though it was. . . and in return, Ben had made Poe cry.

“Fucking _idiot_ ,” Ben growled again, then muttered apologetically to the Meatwagon, “Not you.  Me,” before tucking it back into the gift bag.  He would have to find some way to thank Poe, and maybe apologize if Ben could manage it, but that could wait for another day.  Now, Ben hoped he had dawdled enough to give Poe time to leave, so they wouldn’t have to see each other until after the holidays.

Sure enough, the office was dark except for the emergency light over the exit.  Ben put on his coat and started for the door, then at the last minute remembered he had brought his cookies— _their_ cookies in his mother’s Tupperware.  He ducked into the breakroom to retrieve it before leaving the office with the Tupperware in one hand and his gift bag dangling from the other.

The sun had set, leaving the parking lot almost dark, and Ben nearly didn’t notice the white car parked at the far end.  He only saw it as he looked up after putting his gift and the Tupperware in the back seat of his own car, but he recognized the vehicle right away.  It was Poe’s beat-up sedan.

Ben frowned and stared at the car while he shut the door to his.  He knew Poe wasn’t anywhere inside the office, so why was his car still in the lot?  Squinting, Ben thought he could make out someone in the driver’s seat, but he wasn’t totally sure.

_What if something’s wrong?_ he wondered, completely against his will.  _Maybe he got sick—Rey’s dip did look kind of weird, and he ate some of it. . . ._   The more sensible part of Ben’s brain told him to mind his own business and just go home; Poe wouldn’t want to see him anyway, and he’d probably want to see Ben even less if he felt bad.  But the other half of Ben’s brain, the half that tended to panic and assume the worst about everything, worried that Poe might need help.  That half won out, and Ben shoved his keys in his pocket and walked over to Poe’s car.

As he got closer, he could see that Poe _was_ inside, but not sitting up.  In fact, he appeared to be leaning—or slumped—over the steering wheel.  Ben sped up his walk to a near jog, and when he reached the car, he knocked on the window before he could talk himself out of it.  If something had happened to Poe and Ben just left him there, he’d never be able to forgive himself.

Yet as soon as Ben’s knuckles rapped on the glass, Poe jumped and sat up.  He cast a startled, almost hunted look through the window, and his eyes widened when he saw Ben looking back.  Poe shuddered, and Ben thought he really was sick. . . until he rubbed his arm over his eyes, wiping them with the sleeve of his jacket.

_He was crying,_ Ben realized in horror.  _I caught him crying, and now he’s going to hate me even **more**._   He had no time to do anything about it, though, because Poe was already rolling down the window using a crank on the door.  He didn’t say anything when he got the window open, only stared up at Ben with an expression of abject misery and hopelessness.  His eyes and nose were all red from crying.

“Are—are you all right?” Ben stammered.  “I thought everyone had gone home.”

“Yeah, I. . . my car won’t start.  Think the battery’s dead,” Poe muttered.  Ben wondered if Poe was crying over _that_ , but he didn’t ask.  Poe went on, “I don’t guess you have any jumper cables?”

“No, sorry.”  Ben snuck a look past Poe at the messy interior of his car.  The photo album was lying on the passenger seat.

Poe sighed, “I didn’t think so.  I’m fine.  Gonna call a cab.”  He pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket and thumbed the button to wake it up.  “Have a good night.  Merry Christmas.”  He said it so flatly, it would have been funny in a different situation.

“Poe, wait,” Ben protested.  He gripped the icy cold car door and leaned down so that he was almost on Poe’s level.  Poe blinked at him, and Ben said, “You don’t have to pay for a cab, I can give you a ride home.”  He wondered why Poe was calling a cab instead of one of his many friends, but he didn’t ask that either.

Poe stared at him then mumbled, “You—no, you don’t have to do that.  I’m fine.”

“Quit saying you’re fine,” growled Ben.  “It’s freezing out here, and your jacket’s too thin for this weather.  You’ll be an ice cube before a cab shows up.”  When Poe just continued to stare, Ben stuck his hand in through the window to reach the door handle and open the door.

Poe didn’t take his eyes off Ben while he rolled the window back up; then he leaned over to pick up his photo album before sliding out of his seat and standing up.

“You’re sure you don’t mind?” he asked in the most timid voice Ben had ever heard him use.

“No, I don’t mind.  Now come _on_.”

Finally, Poe locked his car up and followed Ben back to his.  Once Poe was buckled up in the passenger seat, he told Ben where he lived, and Ben set off with the heater on full blast.  He’d been listening to Trans-Siberian Orchestra again, so at least the music was something Poe would like. . . something to distract them both from the complete silence that fell as Ben drove.  Poe lived about ten minutes from the office, in an older, though not historic, neighborhood, and he stared at the window with the album clutched on his lap as Ben navigated the narrow streets.

Then Poe started to sing along with the music.  Ben was so surprised, he nearly drove off the road; he’d never heard or even imagined Poe singing before, especially not Christmas music.  Poe wasn’t bad at it, either, although he kept his voice low as if singing just to himself: “The snow’s coming down, it beckons me dare, it whispers and hopes, it holds and confides and offers a bridge across these divides.”

Ben fixed his eyes on the road and pretended he wasn’t listening, or singing along in his head with the song he’d played every Christmas for years and years: _The parts of my life I tried to forget, it’s gathered each piece and carefully kept.  Somewhere in the dark, beyond all the cold, there is a child that’s part of my soul._

He slowed the car when he turned onto Poe’s street.  Poe lifted a hand, pointed at the second house on the right—a large but run-down house—and muttered, “That one.  I have an apartment upstairs.”  Even as slowly as he drove, Ben reached the driveway too soon, just as the song was ending.

_Got to get back to a reason I once knew, and this late in the seasons, one by one distractions fade from view.  The only reason I have left. . . is you._

“Thanks for the ride,” Poe said.  He reached for the door handle, stopped, then put his hand back on top of the album in his lap.  “Ben?”

“Yeah?”  Ben had already turned to face his passenger as he struggled to find the right thing to say, something to keep Poe there with him a moment longer.  He hadn’t expected Poe to say it first.

“Did you—”  Poe broke off and shifted in his seat so he could look up at Ben’s face.  He looked like he might start crying again.  “Your present.  I tried—I wanted to give you something that meant something.  Did you really hate it that much?”

“What?”  Ben looked over at the gift bag in his back seat, then into Poe’s anguished eyes again.  “Poe, what are you talking about?  Of course I didn’t hate it.  It’s. . . it’s the best thing anyone’s ever given me.  The most thoughtful—I just don’t—I don’t know how you knew.  Rey, did Rey tell you about me always wanting it?”

Poe nodded.  “Yeah.  But I thought—you looked so mad when you opened it.  Mad, or embarrassed.”

“I wasn’t mad.”  Ben’s mouth had gone dry, and he licked his lips unconsciously.  “Maybe a little embarrassed—I didn’t want the others to see it, because they wouldn’t understand, even if I explained it.  But Poe, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for you to think I didn’t like it.  And I didn’t—”  He swallowed and blurted out, “I didn’t mean to make you cry!  I wanted to give you something that meant something, too.”

“You did,” Poe whispered.  “Ben, I don’t understand how you did it.  I mean, I guess you talked to Rey too, but you—you found all those pictures.  After they all burned up.  You found—my family, my mother—”  His voice broke off in a choked sound, and he turned his face away.

_God, no, don’t start crying **again** ,_ Ben pleaded silently.  He barely knew what to do with a happy Poe, much less a distressed one.  He reached out one hand and put it on Poe’s shoulder, half expecting to have it slapped away.

“Poe, I think—we need to talk about this,” Ben said.  “About the gifts and. . . and us.  Please.”

He thought Poe would probably refuse, but the smaller man nodded instead.  Then he looked back at Ben again and asked in a rushed mumble, “Do. . . do you want to come in?  If you don’t have a—a date or something.  I know it’s Friday night, you probably already have plans.”

Ben squeezed Poe’s shoulder and answered, “I guess I could make some space in my busy social calendar for you.”

Poe stared at him again.  Ben sighed.

“That was a joke, Poe.”

Poe’s eyes moved over Ben’s face, and he said, “You’re such a _dork_.”  Then Poe smiled for the first time in hours and got out of the car.

Ben climbed out too, but before he followed Poe up to the house, he got his gift and the Tupperware out of the backseat with the vague notion that having cookies to eat would help make things go more smoothly.

Poe unlocked the front door and held it open for Ben, then led the way up a flight of creaky wooden stairs.  Ben kept his eyes fixed on his feet: it wasn’t like he’d never noticed Poe’s backside before, but he would feel guilty for checking Poe out in such close quarters and especially right before a serious talk about. . . “us.”  Whatever he had meant by “us.”  Ben himself wasn’t sure.

Poe’s apartment consisted of a single bedroom, a bathroom, and a tiny kitchen appended to a sort of living room; the appliances seemed to have been wedged in after the house’s owners decided to make it into apartments.  The place was messy, but no worse than Ben had expected of someone who hand-wrote memos and didn’t hang clipboards up in their proper places.  After they pulled off their jackets, Poe moved a basket of clean laundry off the living room’s lumpy brown sofa and gestured for Ben to sit down.  As Ben did so, Poe placed his photo album on the coffee table.  Said table was made of wooden pallets, and Ben had a suspicion that Rey had made it for Poe.  She’d made Ben one too when she was going through one of her DiY phases.  Poe’s short, perfectly formed fingers with their ragged, chewed nails lingered over the album’s cover for a second before he let it go, and Ben hoped that meant he liked the gift after all.

“Um, do you want some coffee or something?” Poe asked.  His eyes fell on the Tupperware, which Ben had set on the other end of the table, and he grinned suddenly.  “Oh hey, you brought the cookies in!  I was kinda hoping you would.”

“Yeah, coffee would be good,” said Ben, matching Poe’s smile.  “It goes well with cookies.”

As Poe went over to the kitchen to start the little coffee maker he had on the counter, Ben looked at his gift bag, now sitting beside the coffee table; then he pulled out the Meatwagon again and set it on top of Poe’s album.  The two items, vestiges of their childhoods, seemed to belong together.

_Like us,_ Ben thought out of absolutely nowhere.  _We belong together. . . ._   The idea was ridiculous; he and Poe were as different as two people could be, and they had spent at least seventy-five percent of their time together fighting.  But when Ben glanced over at Poe moving around the kitchen, he got a strange, warm feeling in his chest, like he could get used to being there at Poe’s home, or having Poe back at his.  Poe was just so cute and loveable, even doing something mundane like making coffee, and Ben wondered why he hadn’t really noticed before, why it had taken a month of intense concentration on Poe’s gift to make him see it.

When the coffee was ready, Poe called over his shoulder, “Do you want sugar and cream?”

“Just a little sugar, like half a spoonful,” Ben told him.  After a moment, Poe brought over two mugs of coffee, one black and one nearly beige with cream.  He handed Ben the black coffee, then lapped his hands around the other and stood there fidgeting.

Ben mumbled, “Thanks.  Um. . . why don’t you sit down.”  He slid over a few inches to make more room, and Poe dropped down onto the sofa beside him.  Poe took a slurp of his coffee, then leaned forward to pop the top off the Tupperware and take a cookie.

“These did turn out pretty good,” he said before biting into it.

“They did, thanks to you,” Ben told him.  He took one too and nibbled at it.

“No, not just me, you had as much to do with it as I did,” Poe protested before he stopped, looked up at Ben, and started laughing.  “Listen to us.  We’re being so polite trying not to piss each other off—and up until now, we would have been at each other’s throats.”

Ben chuckled too, but it turned into a sigh.  “I’m sorry, Poe.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Poe mumbled.  He drank some more coffee, then set his mug down on the table and shifted to face Ben.  “We said we were gonna be friends, right?  So the rest of it’s in the past now.  We can start over, okay?”

“Okay.”  Ben gave him a slight smile, then looked over at the album.  “But speaking of the past. . . you wanted to know about the pictures, how I got them.”

Poe nodded and whispered, “Yeah.”  He looked at the album too, at first, but then his eyes drifted up to the Meatwagon sitting on top.  Ben was surprised at how wistfully Poe gazed at the toy car.  _Maybe he always wanted one too,_ Ben mused.

“You were right, I talked to Rey about what I should give you,” Ben told Poe.  “She wasn’t a lot of help in coming up with ideas, but she told me—she told me about what happened to you at Christmas, when you were little.”

“Oh.  So that’s how you knew about me not liking the holidays,” murmured Poe.

“Yeah.  She told me you lost everything, and so I thought. . . .”  Ben looked down at his hands folded in his lap.  “Like I told you, I wanted to give you something meaningful, so I decided to try to get you photos—as many pictures as I could from when you were a kid.”  He glanced up at Poe and saw the other man’s entrancing brown eyes staring at him in rapt attention.

Ben felt his face warm, and he went on quickly, “So I started going through your Facebook friends, trying to find people you went to school with who might still have old pictures of you.  Uh, I guess it sounds kind of. . . stalkery, but it was the only way I could think of to do it.  And it worked, they emailed me all those photos.  So I had prints made and put them in the album, and. . . there you are.”

Poe was still looking at him with amazement and something close to admiration.  He murmured Ben’s name; then he leaned over to the coffee table and wiggled the album out from under the Meatwagon.  He held the book on his lap for a second before opening it to the last page.  Poe looked down at the photo of himself and his parents, and Ben worried he might tear up again.  But instead, Poe turned the album around so the picture faced Ben.

“Where did you get this one?” Poe asked.  “It’s—it’s the first time I’ve seen my mother’s face since. . . since it happened.  None of my old friends would have had a family picture of us.  How did you ever find it?”

Ben couldn’t help feeling rather proud of himself as he replied, “It was the last one I got.  You know how you’re Facebook friends with one of your old teachers?”

“Oh, yeah.  Mrs. Metcalfe, first grade.  I’m amazed she even knows how to use the Internet, she’s gotta be like eighty now.”  Poe stopped rambling and blinked up at Ben.  “Wait, you mean, you got that picture from her?”

“Yes, she said that each year, she had her class all bring in family photos to make some kind of bulletin board.  And. . . .”  Ben shrugged with another smile.  “And she’s the kind of teacher who keeps _everything_ , so she still had the photos from your class after all these years.  She scanned yours and emailed it to me.”

“She. . . she knows how to use a scanner?” mumbled Poe; then he shook his head and turned his wide-eyed stare up at Ben.  “Ben, I. . . I can’t believe it.  I can’t believe you found all these pictures, that you—you went to all that trouble and put them in the album and did all that for. . . .”  His voice trailed off into a whisper.  “For me.”

“It wasn’t so much trouble,” Ben murmured to him.  “And I should be honest—at first I just wanted to outdo you.  I know you’d get something amazing for whomever you drew, so I wanted to get you something even _more_ amazing.  But then. . . .”  He took another swallow of his coffee both to calm his nerves and to give him the courage to continue.

“But then the more I heard about you from your old friends, the more I realized how—how special you are.  None of them had anything but the best to say about you.  And then when we went shopping, and when you helped me with the cookies, I understood why.”  Ben made himself look up at Poe again as he finished, “I ended up not wanting to outdo you anymore.  I just wanted to make you happy.”

Poe’s voice sounded hoarse when he said, “You did, Ben.  This is the most wonderful thing anyone’s ever done for me.  You’ve made me _so_ happy.”

“But you looked so upset at the office—I thought—”

Poe interrupted him with a shaky laugh.  “Yeah, I was upset, but not because of your present.  It just made me emotional to see. . . _this._ ”  He brushed his hand over the family photo.  “I didn’t want to start crying or something in front of everybody.  And then, when you opened what I got you and—and you wouldn’t even look at it. . . .”  His voice wavered again.

“If you didn’t want Phasma and them seeing you cry, _I_ didn’t want them to see me freak out over a toy car,” Ben said.  “We just both misunderstood each other.  I guess—I guess we’ve been misunderstanding each other for a long time.  But I love it, Poe, I really do.  I’ve always wanted one.  Rey told you that?”

“Unh hunh.”  Poe nodded, sniffed loudly, and rubbed his sleeve over his eyes again, although he wasn’t exactly crying.  “Same situation.  At first I wanted to bring in a better gift than you did.  But after I spent yesterday afternoon at your house, and you. . . you were so _nice_ to me, and I wanted so bad to be your friend. . . I wanted to make you happy too.”

Ben put a hand, very tentatively, on Poe’s arm and assured him, “You did.  But where on earth did you get it?”  He scooped up the Meatwagon with his other hand and set it on the sofa cushion between them, where he touched its hood with reverence.

“I never bought one myself because they cost so much, and this one’s in such good shape.  I hope you didn’t—you didn’t spend too much money on it, did you?”  Ben knew it was the height of rudeness to discuss how much a gift had cost; his mother would probably throttle him if she knew he’d brought it up.  Yet he couldn’t stand the thought of Poe sacrificing something like a whole paycheck for his sake.

“No, I didn’t spend too much on it,” murmured Poe.  He was looking down at the Meatwagon too, and he put his hand on top of it, not far from Ben’s.  “I—well, I should be honest, I didn’t spend anything at all.  It was mine, from when I was a kid.”  He added in what sounded like a weak attempt at light-heartedness, “You wouldn’t know it to see this place, but I took really good care of my stuff as a kid.”

Ben might have been offended that Poe hadn’t bought his gift after all, but instead, he was even more impressed.  He looked at Poe with curiosity, but smaller man kept his face turned down toward the toy.

“Poe, really?  It was yours, and you gave it to _me_?  Just because you knew I wanted one?”

Poe nodded without looking up.

“Wow,” Ben breathed.  “Thank you, Poe.  I’ll treasure. . . it.”  His words faltered when, abruptly, he remembered something Rey had said: “The family lost everything, _literally_ everything except the clothes they were sleeping in.”

Ben frowned and asked, “Poe?  Rey said you guys lost everything in the fire.  Did you get this afterwards?”

Poe’s voice was barely audible, and it shook again when he said, “Uh, no, we didn’t lose _everything._   We. . . carried some stuff out.”

“But she said—”  Ben broke off mid-sentence when Poe sniffled again.  He started over, “Rey said that all you took out was your favorite toy.  Was—was this it?  This is all you had left from. . . before?”

Poe nodded again, and the black plastic Meatwagon sitting between them took on an entire other dimension of meaning.

“Poe, I can’t accept this,” Ben whispered.  “I can’t take it away from you.”

Poe protested in a stronger voice, “But I gave it to you.  Ben, I want you to have it.”  He finally lifted his head, and his eyes were wide and wet.

Ben shook his head, picked up the Meatwagon with both hands, and placed it in Poe’s lap.

“It belongs with you, Poe.”

Poe’s hands clutched at the Power Wagon even as he tried to argue, “But it’s your _gift_.  If you don’t take it, you—I won’t have given you _anything_.  And you gave me so much.”  Despite that, Poe’s body language—the protective way he leaned forward over the toy and how he drew it closer to his stomach—clearly said he didn’t want to let it go.  Something about that touched Ben deeply.

“You gave me plenty,” he murmured.  “You helped me out when you didn’t have to, and you said we’d be friends.  That’s the best gift you could ever give me.”

Poe gave his head a weak shake, making the tangle of curls Ben loved tumble over his forehead; then he groaned, “You big sappy _dork_.  That’s s-so—so _corny_.”  Then he let go of the Meatwagon and reached up to put his hands on Ben’s shoulders instead as he whispered, “Thank you.”

\--

To be continued


	6. Chapter 6

Ben had never been much for hugging people, but he remembered how nice Poe had felt in his arms the day before, and Poe was so close to him now, touching his shoulders and looking up at him with those eyes that drove Ben crazy sometimes.  Ben slipped his arms around Poe’s back and, when Poe didn’t protest, pulled the smaller man into an embrace.  Poe drew in his breath sharply; then his arms went around Ben too, and he hugged Ben hard.

“Maybe we can share custody?” he mumbled into Ben’s sweater.  “You can have visitation rights, come see Meatwagon whenever you want.”

“Now who’s being a dork?” Ben demanded.  Poe was warm, and his hair felt soft against Ben’s cheek.  Ben didn’t want to let him go ( _not ever,_ he thought), but if he held on much longer, things would start to get awkward.  He released Poe and drew back, although he regretted it when he felt Poe’s hands cling to his shoulders, as if Poe didn’t want to let go either.

“I’d, uh, I’d better get home,” said Ben.  “I have to go over to my parents’ house tomorrow to help my mother start the cooking.”

Poe raised his eyebrows.  “I thought you didn’t cook.”

“I don’t, but that doesn’t seem to matter to Mom.”  Ben felt relieved when Poe finally laughed at one of his jokes.  He got up, then eyed the Tupperware with the three cookies it still contained.  “Uh, if you have something to put them in, you can have the rest of the cookies.”

“You’re giving back your present _and_ leaving the cookies?” retorted Poe.  “Since when did you become such a martyr?”  Nevertheless, he was already headed over to the kitchen for a sandwich bag.

“I’ll have more than enough desserts to deal with on Christmas Day,” Ben said.  He watched Poe transfer the cookies and seal up the Tupperware again.

“I guess your family has dinner together?”

“Yeah.”  Ben took the Tupperware from Poe and reluctantly drifted toward the door.  “My parents and me, and Rey and her dad, and sometimes some of my parents’ friends.  And last year Finn came, so I guess he’ll be there too.”

Poe nodded and joked, “So like, half the office will be there.  You can’t even get away from work at Christmas, hunh?  But I guess it beats my plans—I have to go battery shopping tomorrow then try to fix my car.  If I’m lucky, I’ll be spending Christmas here and not out in the office parking lot.”

Poe had followed Ben to the door, where they now stood facing each other.  Ben looked down at the smaller man and thought about Poe being alone for the holiday, hopefully not out in a parking lot but still in his little apartment which didn’t have so much as a sprig of holly up for decoration.  _Of course he doesn’t decorate,_ Ben told himself, _not if he hates Christmas so much.  It’s probably just like every other day to him, and it doesn’t bother him to be alone._   Even so, it bothered Ben.

“Um, Poe,” he murmured, “you can come too, if you want to.  It’s not just dinner, we usually spend most of the day together.  So if you’re not doing anything, you’re welcome to—to join us.”  Poe’s eyes widened, and he stared up at Ben.

“You mean at your parents’ house?” Poe asked.  “But. . . it’s your _family_.  I wouldn’t want to impose, and—I don’t know them.”

Although Ben knew he should just accept no for an answer, he found himself arguing with Poe anyway, maybe out of force of habit.

“You’d know me, and Rey and Finn.  And like I said, my parents have friends that come sometimes, and Finn’s not family—not yet anyway.”  Ben anticipated another objection and added, “I can pick you up if your car isn’t running by then.  In fact, it’s probably better I do, since they live kind of out in the country.”

“But. . . .”  Poe’s face looked darker than usual, and it took Ben a moment to understand it was from a combination of the apartment’s dim lighting and the fact that Poe was. . . blushing.  Poe bit his lip, then started over, “But won’t your mom be mad if an additional person just shows up?  There won’t be enough food—”

Ben interrupted, “She always makes enough for about _five_ extra people.  Poe, if you don’t want to come, just say so and I’ll drop it, but quit making excuses.”

Poe surprised him by saying right away, “I do want to come.  But. . . but why do _you_ want me to?  Why are you being so nice to me?”

“Because we’re friends now,” said Ben, “and because I like you.  I want to—to spend time with you.”

“Really?”  The word was barely audible, and Poe had the same look of wonder on his face he’d had when Ben explained how he’d compiled the photo album.  Ben felt like he was probably blushing himself, but he managed to reply.

“Yeah.  Really.”

That time, Poe hugged Ben first.  He did it hard, shoving both arms under Ben’s so Poe could wrap them around his chest.  Ben tried to hug him back with one arm, the other hand being occupied with his mother’s Tupperware; then he gave up on holding on to both and dropped the Tupperware so he could curl that hand around Poe’s back too.

“I like you too,” Poe whispered.  His head was on Ben’s shoulder, and his breath tickled Ben’s neck.  “You’ve made this the first nice holiday I’ve had since the fire, and it’ll be even nicer if I can be with you on Christmas.  I don’t want to be alone.”

“You don’t have to be,” Ben whispered back.  He squeezed Poe’s waist with one hand, and the other drifted up to brush the curls trailing the back of Poe’s neck.  Poe made a soft noise, something halfway between a squeak and a sigh.

“I’ll try to do something with my hair,” he mumbled.

“Your—what?”

“My hair.”  Poe tilted his head back so he could meet Ben’s eyes.  “Straighten it or something.  Or get a haircut if anything’s open tomorrow.”  When Ben just gazed at him with blank incomprehension, Poe elaborated, “Before I come over.  For Christmas.”

“Uh. . . okay,” stammered Ben.  “Why?”

“Because you don’t like it,” said Poe in a “duh” tone of voice.  “You said it’s always a mess. . . that I’m always a mess.  I’ll shave and all too.”  As Ben’s blank look continued, Poe murmured, “I won’t embarrass you in front of your family by making them think your new friend’s a slob, I promise.”

“Poe. . . .”  Finally, Ben realized what Poe was referring to: their argument the week before, when Poe implied that Ben looked pretentious. . . and Ben implied that Poe looked trashy.  Ben groaned, “Oh, shit.  Poe—I didn’t mean any of that, you know I didn’t, right?  You look fine just the way you are.”

“No, no, you were right, I don’t fix up enough,” Poe protested.  “I can—”

“ _Poe_.”  Ben grabbed a handful of Poe’s tangled hair and tugged it to make Poe look him in the eyes.  “I like your hair.  I like it just like this.”  He loosened his grip and combed his fingers through the dark brown curls, secretly marveling at how soft they felt.

“But you said—”

“I lied, okay?  Whatever I said, I was trying to insult you, but I lied.  Your hair looks great.”  Poe’s eyes brightened a little, and Ben found himself continuing, “You always look great, no matter what.  You’re—”  He almost blurted out something like “gorgeous” or “mind-blowingly hot” but managed to say, “You’re really good-looking,” instead.  Nevertheless, the blush on Poe’s cheeks deepened to a deep rose shade.

“You really think so?” Poe whispered.  He dropped his lashes lower over his eyes and bit his lip again, and Ben wondered if Poe could possibly be unaware of how he looked when he did those things: utterly, incomprehensibly desirable.

_Of course he knows,_ Ben thought, _he can’t **not** know how sexy he is.  And if he knows, that means he’s doing it on purpose.  It means he’s. . . flirting.  With me.  **Me**._

Sure enough, Poe went on in the same low murmur, “You’re really good-looking too, Ben.”

“Not stuffy and pretentious?”

Poe shook his head.  “Nunh unh.  Not at all.”

He reached up to trail his fingers through the hair that hung around Ben’s face, and they came to rest against the taller man’s cheek.  Poe’s hand felt nice there, warm and strong along the side of Ben’s face. . . like it belonged there, the way Poe felt like he belonged in Ben’s arms.  Ben slipped his own hand from the back of Poe’s head to cup his jaw.  When Poe didn’t try to pull away, Ben drew him closer and tilted his face up.  He did it all cautiously, still giving Poe a chance to escape, but Poe just let his lashes fall even farther closed and his lips part ever so slightly.  His hand curled alongside Ben’s face and gave a gentle tug, so Ben leaned down and kissed him.

Poe’s lips felt a little rough but warm, and his mouth was warm too, and he tasted like the super-sweet coffee he had drunk.  Ben kissed him slowly, maybe a bit clumsily since he hadn’t kissed anyone in quite some time and didn’t have all that much experience with it to begin with.  Poe didn’t seem to mind.  He pushed his tongue deep into Ben’s mouth and guided Ben’s with it; then their mouths broke apart.  They stood there still holding each other a moment before Poe spoke.

“This isn’t exactly being friends, is it?”

“This is friends,” Ben whispered back.  “Just. . . really good friends.”

Poe laughed softly and met Ben’s eyes with his, looking up through his long eyelashes.  “ _Boy_ friends, maybe?”

Ben caught his breath.  He hadn’t expected that so soon, but when he hesitated, a flicker of disappointment passed over Poe’s hopeful face, and he started to pull back.  The abrupt panic Ben felt told him that he _did_ want an actual relationship with Poe, because Ben couldn’t imagine giving Poe up to be with anyone else.

“Poe,” he hissed as he wrapped his arms around Poe’s shoulders to keep the smaller man close to him.  “I—I want that.  But. . . we’ll probably still have fights.  Maybe a _lot_ of fights, until we learn how to compromise a little better.”

“I know,” Poe murmured.  “I know we’re still gonna fight.  And yeah, maybe a lot at first.  But Ben, we can work it out.  Just like we did with the cookies and the presents.  We’ll work it out.”

“Okay,” Ben whispered back.  “We’ll work it out.  And I’ll be your—your boyfriend.”

Poe rocked up on his toes and kissed Ben again.  This time, it didn’t feel so clumsy.  By the time they finally said goodbye and Ben left for home, being with Poe already felt perfect.

\--

Two days later, Ben picked up his new boyfriend at ten and drove out to his parents’ house for Christmas.  He’d spent most of Christmas Eve texting Poe in between running errands and doing other tasks for his mother—and complaining about having to do all the work since his father had conveniently disappeared that morning right after breakfast, before he could be roped into helping.  Eventually, Ben’s mother had taken his phone away until their holiday preparations were finished, which Ben also complained about once he got home that night and Poe called him.  Ostensibly, the purpose of the call was to inform Ben that Poe had bought a new battery and managed to get his car running again, but Ben insisted on picking him up the next morning anyway.  By the time they got off the phone, it was after midnight, and Poe ended the call by saying, “Merry Christmas, baby,” and hanging up before Ben could think of how to reply.

The next day, Poe asked, “What if your parents don’t like me?” on the way to their house.  He was looking out the window again, like he had the other times he’d ridden with Ben, and Ben realized that meant Poe felt nervous.

“Of course they’ll like you,” Ben sighed.  “Who _doesn’t_ like you?”

“ _You_ didn’t,” mumbled Poe.

“That was when I was young and foolish,” Ben declared seriously.  Poe chuckled, a good sign that he was starting to pick up on when Ben was joking.  Ben went on, “Seriously, Poe, everyone always likes you.  And it’s not like they don’t know who you are—Rey’s mentioned you before, and so have I.”

“Really?”  Poe turned in his seat to look at Ben.  “What’d you say?  Did you tell them yesterday that I’m your—your boyfriend now?”

Ben flushed and shook his head.  “I, uh, didn’t say that, not in so many words.  But. . . Mom kept asking who I was texting, and then when I mentioned I was bringing a friend for dinner and she asked who and I said ‘Poe, from work,’ and she said, ‘Oh, _Poe_ ,’ and. . . um. . . she totally knows.”  Poe laughed outright, and Ben added, “I guess I’d talked about you before, more than I thought.”

“Talked about me, or complained about me?”

“Both, probably.”  Ben glanced over at him and couldn’t help smiling when he saw how intently Poe was watching him.  “But don’t worry, they’ll like you.”

When they got to Ben’s parents’ house, Poe enthused over how much he liked it while Ben unlocked the door with his key and let them in.  His mother had gone all out with the decorations—they were tasteful but _everywhere_ —and Ben worried that Poe might be upset or at least overwhelmed.  However, Poe just smiled as he looked around, and Ben began to relax.  Maybe Poe didn’t hate the holidays so much as long as they were more than a reminder of what he’d lost.  He slipped his small hand into Ben’s large one, and they started to follow the scent of roasting turkey back to the kitchen where Ben knew his mother would be.

However, he stopped Poe in the doorway between the living room and a hall.  Poe looked up at him questioningly, and Ben licked his lips.

“Um, since—since you don’t usually do Christmas, maybe. . . maybe you don’t know about mistletoe,” he stammered.  Poe blinked and looked up.  The (somewhat scraggly) piece of mistletoe hanging in the doorway over their heads had actually been Ben’s doing, not his mother’s, but he decided Poe didn’t need to know that he’d planned such a sappy and, well, kitschy encounter.

But Poe grinned anyway and accused, “You’re a _dork_ , Ben.”

“See, it’s a tradition that comes from Norse mythology that—mmpgh!”  Poe cut Ben’s lecture short by throwing his arms around the taller man’s neck, standing on his toes, and kissing him.  Ben wrapped him in an embrace and returned the kiss.  When Poe dropped back down on his heels, Ben stroked a wayward curl back from his forehead and whispered, “Merry Christmas, Poe.  You don’t have to worry about me giving back my present—I’d rather have you than the Meatwagon any day.”

“I think that’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” Poe whispered back.  He was smirking as he said it, but the affectionate expression in his pretty eyes said more than the smirk did.  Ben bent his head to kiss Poe again; then he grabbed his boyfriend’s hand once more and took Poe in to join his family.

\--

The End


End file.
